JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Absolute Essential #1

Excellent post, Rand.

The recording that has affected me most is Gordon Lightfoot's "Song for a Winter's Night." The guitar riff is a flowing fingerpicking passage of a flat seven with a one in the bass, moving to a four with a one in the bass, to a five with a seven in the bass, and then a one. It quickly became my "warm up" riff when picking up the guitar. It paints a winter scene, looking through a wooden framed window out to the moonlit woods that seems like a snow globe. I can see the oil lamp on the rough hewn table, casting enough of a glow to read the well worn letter unfolded sitting next to a glass of red wine. All of this is brought to mind through those simple chords ringing from a wood box and some steel strings.

Lightfoot's baritone sung 3 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 8 7 6..." I read again between the lines upon the page" 5 5 5 5 4 4 3 "The words of love you sent me." There's love, hope, longing. (8ve) 1 1 1 2 3 4 3 2 "If I could only have you near "
7 7 7 8 7 6 5 "to breathe a sigh or two.." No big jumps, scale passages with a vocal treatment like the romance of Schubert. Refined, like songs of the Dichterliebe, but rough hewn, like the scene it evokes.

It's a musical experience that is always the same to me. While other songs have changed--the mystery of the Eagles' "New Kid in Town" dissolving from a time when I couldn't figure out the chords to a time when more difficult chord changes are easy to hear and write even without an instrument present (years of reading charts takes away some of the mystery, that's good and bad I guess ). Even when listening to songs from my early youth brings changed perceptions, "Song for a Winter's Night" never changes. It's new yet it's old. I think it's older than I, older than Lightfoot.

The closest of my own recorded compositions is an acoustic guitar fingerpick isntrumental, "Papa Hawg." It also has a passage of that old flat seven with a one in the bass. But even "Papa Hawg" seems to change with time.

That's the song I chase, the song that chases me.