Friday, March 3, 2017

(Ben Bullington) The Friend I Knew But Never Had

(Ben Bullington) The Friend I Knew But Never Had

Today is days after the creation of another new song. Time seems to fly you know?  In this song writing experience, when reflecting on it, I can say it to be typical of writing songs, that being, it is always different!   The circumstances that surround the idea, and its sprouting into becoming a song, well they are unique to themselves, drawing from days now years ago, a time with a friend to watch good musicians play their own tunes.  I saw Merle Haggard that weekend.  The “Red Ants Pants Music Festival” If you go check it out, I'm pretty sure you will have a good time.  Really I am not here to talk about or promote the festival, because unlike the festival, this song is that which I did show up to write about, this song seems pretty darn good to me.  There is a very odd circumstance to tell here,  a connection between this song and the music festival.  On the morning that this song came, I'd received the mailing list announcement from the Red Ants Pants Foundation, telling about the upcoming summer show.  And it really is only some circumstance which led me to write this song.

Those years ago when I attended the Red Ants Pants Music Festival, one of the artists showcased was, Ben Bullington.  He was a gifted guitarist, singer, and song writer.  Since my introduction to Ben at the Festival, I did a simple search on that YouTube and found many very good samples of Ben and his music.   In there, I'd found one video that I especially appreciate, maybe because of my own, smidgen of a connection to the actual place, but the song and the setting with which the video contained it, has a memory that lingers still.   I found and turned on that video, that morning, after receiving the e-mail from the Red Ants Pants Foundation, to again view its content.  It was just the same as it was the last time I saw it. :)  Ben's song, White Sulphur Springs, beautiful to my ear.  Now Ben, he passed away a year or more ago, so I cherish the memories.  After its conclusion the song idea in words began to form.

With the recognition of what I wrote above, I then contemplated an idea which was forming.  The idea having to do with an abstraction about how we, as humans can be personally impacted by music, by songs, their lyric, or some of the lines there in.  None the less, it is seemingly quite a phenomenon that humans can form bonds in that manner, yet there it is, we do, it is real.  I think myself in some ways have felt as though I knew some songwriters through their music.  They were like friends, in that abstract way.  The lyrics formed up in acknowledgement of that friend like situation which comes up with individuals and song writers, or maybe it is just me, hmmm?? Friends that we never had came as a line.  Well I wrote four line stanzas, three of them, then tried another but the words didn't line up really, a line showed up yet it was incomplete.  I passed it by, although, I left it on the page, I then wrote I believe two more sets of stanzas, before I actually stopped to read what was there.  I looked at it knowing, its intent.

The content seemed a mess, yet there was a theme, based in the memory described above.  With the mouse I high-lite the third paragraph, grabbed and dropped it at the top, then moved what had previously been first putting it third.  Now the idea was clear, the song is about songs.  Its about what songs can show or do.  Songs are unique in that way pointing out a very specific topic.  It's powerful art.

I came to a halt at this point.  There were words forming up, they had that needed characteristic of meter, yet no music.  Through my own experience, it is seldom that I can continue writing words before having touched an instrument with a definite inspiration, but I had nothing.  It has happened previously, coming to a point where the muse seems to have fled the room.  In the past some songs I've stopped entirely, they still await their due completion, the song intended, but the song must contain it's initial inspiration to continue.  So I am stopped, I have thoughts of being influenced by the music of Ben's song, because it was the last thing I had experienced prior to the muse's stream, the stream I was following until now when away it went.  I had the '62 Gibson J-45 in my hand, its scarred face a unique portrait of its history, leaving cracks and a missing chip of spruce near where the sound hole nears the fingerboard on the upper front bout.  It's character, the injuries that happen.  Its sound comes out sweetly when finger-tips strike them just right.   A rhythm formed, as did the question of suitability for the lyrics on the computer screen.  Actually that particular rhythm sounded like something else, at least in a way, no I say, no!  More tries, left me feeling that I'm being forceful rather than flowing.  Maybe the muse is really gone?  Then it came together, just as suddenly as the words, voice engaged, struggling to read the computer screen.  I stopped adjusting the lyrics, larger, to large to fit in one desktop window, so I opened a new document, placed it beside the window of lyrics, copy and pasting the lyrics in the fresh window, then scrolling the second window to show the words hidden in that lower left, below the window's size limit.  Now with large sized letters I could read the words as best as I am able and back to the guitar and its fine sound with finger tips, but no, a pick will sound different, and a pick took the task.  I'd found a rhythm and a chord progression in C Major.  It is a long time since I've written a song in C.  It started coming together, but the tongue brain interface and alignment with the lyric in the cadence, as it often does, seemed like singing tongue twisters.  I believe this is a tempo issue, where a quick tempo rhythm forces the mouth to go faster and in strange ways while their order remains unknown in the brain.  And as normal for me when dealing with the unfamiliar, I tend to speed up, which makes the difficulty more of a struggle.  I had found this song, it was coming home.  I sang the first verse, then again, then the second a couple of times, struggling to form the words.  I could tell this was going to be one of those hard ones to learn.  I got through these first three verses to decide that the incomplete line I'd previously abandon, could form up a chorus, and I shifted the rhythm up a 4th to the F forming a chorus.  It was too short, being but two phrases, “the starry eyed, the story spun.”  The writer and the story he'd told.   Then a different kind of idea came, from looking above seeing a line already written.  Paste, instant gratification, it was a tie, connecting an earlier thought, that could become a theme.  I sang that a couple of times, still too short?  I left it again, to sing the next sets of lines.  The upper half of the song shows a distinct subject  of what songs bring in messages, if any.  I mean there are no real rules. This song says it is about songs by declaring, “Songs are sung,” also saying “songs are made.”  The point being that songs can do things to people, they stir up emotion of all kinds.  It is also saying that the author of a song is significant to the songs point of view.  The second half of the song, I say half although the second part is more lengthy than the first, the song shifts to the observer of songs, the point of view being the listener, having recognized a song as meaningful.  The song then concludes by recognizing that Ben has died and that his death has its own impact on individuals.  I know his death had a noted twitch in me, back when I heard of it.  That is why I gave the song it's oddly formed name: (Ben Bullington) The Friend I Knew But Never Had.  I have experience this situation with Ben, and now it is this song.  So Ben, I guess this song is for you, RIP.

In this moment, I've no idea when this song will have it's own recording completion. It could be days, or weeks. or month, even years away, if ever.  The song referred to in the previous post is of a song that awaited recording for a year and a half.  When it is finished, I'll make notice.