Nashville’s FrazierBand has what you need with their latest single off of their forthcoming album, Some People Change. “The Rod and The Cain” is the perfect song to crank up with the windows down, the pulsating mandolin overlaid with cool guitar tones. Fronted by acclaimed bluegrass multi-instrumentalist John Frazier (Del McCoury, John Prine, Bela Fleck), the group is finishing up their second studio album with Daniel Rice (Cadillac Sky). Look for the full release this September.

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My mom and I haven’t had the easiest row to hoe. Girls and their mothers bring out the worst in each other, and we’re no different, but as the years have gone by, and time has mellowed us both, we’ve come to a place of understanding. We understand each other’s faults and frailties, and how they stand in contrast to our strengths and true nature. At one point I realized that being like her wouldn’t be such a bad thing, and rather than write that idea off as a sentimental brain turd, I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget it. My mom is my diamond in the rough.

04 Diamond In The Rough

She came along in a less than perfect world, where the stars still shine on ordinary girls,

With mousy hair and hands that apologize for all the sights that scream between her eyes.

She didn’t take the time to think it through; sometimes, it’s true, you are what you gotta do.

If it was paved in something more than she could see, she’d a missed that turn that drove towards reality and Electronic Cigarette me.

All the things that she can’t change are born on a back bound to break from the weight of her own lack of dignity.

She’s a diamond in the rough and a lady I’d like to be.

A boy was born in 1971, sweet enough to be his mother’s son.

A brother came, then a lover, then a life. Some unseen tears, anger; strife.

I came along as the bridge was swept away. A momentary glimpse at saving grace,

But nothing’s sure, and sure as I stand, she packed her dreams in bags filled with sand and ran.

Now all those years she still regrets gave her a heavy heart she’s unsure how to mend.

She’s wary of that girl she used to be, Lord, she’s a diamond in the rough, but a lady I’d like to be.

And the decades flow beyond the afterglow of a reckoning precluding peace.

I can see her face, it’s with me everyday staring back at me. What a sight to see.

She came along in a less than perfect world, where stars still shine on ordinary girls.

Her days of starting out are at an end, so she laughs and takes reality by the hand again.

Now all those things that we can’t change are the little things that time can’t rearrange.

We’ve come to terms with what life seems to be for that diamond in the rough; that lady I’d like to be.

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Surely, this isn’t the case in every incidence of infidelity. Surely there has been someone who has said, “You know what? You have done me wrong, and you’re secret is out. I’m penis enlargement info not an idiot; I know what you’re doing, but you owe me. You owe me one final chance to love me like you have been loving someone else. You’re gonna do this, just for my sake, and then you will truly feel like shit, and I will have had the final word.”

03 Lay Me Down

Put down your keys and lock the door; you’re not out of cigarettes.

Once upon a time, you were all mine; it’s not my fault I can’t forget.

Lay me down, lay me down

Love me just once like you love her all the time, then we’ll pretend again that you’re not mine.

In places where the whiskey just won’t hit, you’ve traded dignity.

I’m not the girl she seems to be, but you can do this just for me.

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I recorded a country album, and there is no way of getting around that fact. I wrote sad folk songs, and once fleshed out by my very talented and musically diverse band, they turned into sad country songs. I know what you’re thinking:  no, you will never hear them on country radio. Not once do I mention how much I love Johnny, Waylon and Willie. My penchant for drinking Jack Daniels by the gallon and driving the back roads of my hometown is far eclipsed by my very real and tangible love for the occasional nip of Hendrick’s Gin. And fortunately, for the male population of East Nashville, I do not know how to properly wield a baseball bat. I love a well-crafted lyric and a soaring melody. I live for the whine of a steel guitar, and most importantly, in the stories of people just like me.

“Hello Heartache” was my first real crack at writing a song for Buck Owens. His music was swirling around my head at the time, and I wanted to put something down that would be worthy of him picking it up. I think I got close.

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Hello Heartache

“Hello Heartache”

Hello Heartache, my, you’re looking fine; like a tall drink of water Payday Loans that’ll make my throat run dry.

Hello heartache, here we are again; stuck between a breath, gonna turn into a hell of a mess.

I’ve danced with you before, and when the dance was over you left me all alone on the floor.

I know what I’m in for, but I’ll think about it later while we dance a little more.

Hello heartache, tell me where you been? Were you looking for a love and a mother for a new best friend?

Well, I don’t need you when you’re not around, but you find me and my little heart begins to break back down.

I’ve danced with you before, and when the dance was over you left me all alone on the floor.

I know what I’m in for, but I’ll think about it later while we dance a little more.

Goodbye heartache, it’s time for you to go. Don’t forget to take the kisses you been leavin’ at my bedroom door.

Goodbye heartache, I have realized it takes more to make a fool of me than just your pretty, blue eyes.

You’ve dance with me before; you have spun me ’til I’m sick, feeling like I can’t get off the floor.

I know what I’m in for; I’m tired and I’ve decided I don’t wanna dance anymore.

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Let me be frank, my father is not deaf. We don’t communicate through American Sign Language, and our knowledge of hand signals pertain only to those that are used in the most dire of situations (like rush-hour traffic). He simply worked around loud power tools for too long. That being said, after all these years of recording songs and giving him albums, he has yet to understand what the hell I’ve g postmessage propecia guest forum been saying. Luckily for him, I haven’t had much to say…

This marks the first in a series of weekly posts that will list the lyrics to a particular song from my brief catalogue, beginning with my most recent release, October 2012’s Love Letters.

Dad, thanks for continuing to badger me to write these words down.

Trouble Fades

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“Trouble Fades”

You came and went, just like a hit of cocaine, right to my head; just like a firecracker lit in my hands, as trouble fades. Trouble fades away.

Time stands still, as life goes rushing by my bare windowsill; those lifeless hours waiting ’round until my trouble fades. Trouble fades away

The bitter root bears some bitter fruit, and I’ve bitten off more than I can chew as trouble fades; does trouble fade?

Will trouble fade away?

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Accidents happen. Whether it’s a 13-car pileup or a plate of spaghetti all over a nice white carpet, no one escapes this life unscathed. The one similarity that all accidents share is a need for the right conditions: one person not paying attention while they’re texting, another not noticing that skateboard left in the middle of the living room. Sometimes, that most exciting and joyful of all accidents, serendipity, deals a hand even the house didn’t see coming. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Stax Records’  “Green Onions”, a song that helped put a company, a genre and a culture into the ears of an audience, hungry for a new, yet familiar groove to call their own.

In the summer of 1962, conditions were ripe for a breakthrough at Stax. The release of, and subsequent success of “Last Night” in 1961, had brought the fledgling studio into the national spotlight, followed by William Bell’s first charting single, “You Don’t Miss Your Water” by early 1962. Things were picking up, with a batch of musicians that would soon become the nexus of the Stax sound, backing up everyone who walked through the door. “I was called down to Stax”, says bassist Lewie Steinberg. “They said, ‘We got a session we wanna cut on a country-western artist, name of Billy Riley’. I think it was Billy Riley. We sat in there and we fumbled around him, and fumbled around him, and it just wasn’t workin’”. Rather than waste what was left of the session after Riley left, Steinberg, along with Al Jackson Jr., Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper began jamming.

“Now, the studio time was already paid for, so we took a little break, and came back in there”, continues Steinberg. “We were just sittin’ around and I told Al and Booker, I said, ‘Tell you what let’s do, while we just sittin’ up here killin’ time, let’s play some blues’. I says, ‘play us some good old-fashioned blues’. And that’s when we played “Behave Yourself”. Hearing something he liked, Jim Stewart, Stax co-founder and head engineer at the time, began to roll tape.”We didn’t even know he was recording it”, said Steve Cropper, in Rob Bowman’s book, Soulsville U.S.A: The Story of Stax Records. After the guys finished their second run through, he called them into the control room to listen to the finished product. Sensing a hit, Stewart sent them back into the studio to cut a B-side. What ensued is nothing short of a miracle.

Tim Sampson, Communications Director at the Stax Museum and Soulsville Foundation, outlines what happened next: “They had recorded it, and Jim Stewart liked it, but he told them he couldn’t release a 45 with only one song on it; they needed something on the other side. So, they started playing on a riff that Booker T. Jones had written not long before that. They just did it, recorded it, gave it a name”. Originally christened “Funky Onions” by Steinberg, Estelle Axton, co-founder of Stax and head of the adjoining Satellite Record Shop, put her foot down. “Miss Axton said, ‘Now Lewie, you know we can’t put that out like that, ‘funky’. You know you can’t put that’’, Steinberg reminisces. “The public wasn’t ready for that then. So, she changed it to ‘Green Onions’”.

As musicians know, not every song you put out is as good as it could be, but when it is, there’s no doubt. Cropper and the rest of the guys knew that the second cut of that session was far more important than the original blues cut. Stewart wasn’t convinced that “Green Onions” should be the A-side, but on Tuesday morning, Cropper took it down to Reuben Washington at WLOK to give it a listen. One spin on the turntable lit the phones up, and they didn’t stop. Back at Satellite, they couldn’t pick up the phone fast enough: people wanted to know where to find what they just heard on the radio!

Stax put the single out on their subsidiary label, Volt, and “Green Onions” was released as Volt 102, b/w “Behave Yourself”. In an effort to spread the word beyond Memphis, Cropper hit the road and handed out promotional copies to every radio station within a 200 mile radius. Soon enough, they caught the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records, Stax’ distribution partner. Due to the recent successes on the Stax label, he recommended pulling “Green Onions” from Volt and reissuing it on Stax. On August 4, 1962, Stax and Atlantic took out an ad in Billboard Magazine, in support of Stax 127, “Green Onions”, which went on to reach number one on the Billboard R&B chart and number three on the pop chart. By the end of 1962, “Green Onions” was coasting on sales of 700,000 copies.

Despite being labeled as “serendipitous” by everyone involved, there is more to the story than that. Accidents always have a back story; there are always factors that play into the outcome of any situation. First of all, the musicianship that had evolved in Memphis, was of such a rare caliber that it made the creative process feel as natural as breathing. Booker T. was a musical genius, having picked up and mastered guitar, bass, organ, piano, baritone saxophone and trombone by the age of 17. He could regularly be found in the Satellite record shop, listening in to what was happening in the studio. When he wasn’t there, he was playing in either Willie Mitchell’s or Ben Branch’s bands around Memphis. Alongside Booker T. were two of Memphis’ finest and most sought after rhythm players: drummer Al Jackson Jr. and bassist Lewie Steinberg. Both Jackson and Steinberg came from whole families full of musical progeny. Steinberg, in particular, came from a long line of talent, starting with his father

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aladdins gold online casino flash play, who held the piano chair at PeeWee’s Saloon, on Beale Street. The elder Steinberg was the piano player when W.C. Handy, the “Father Of The Blues” wrote his famous “Memphis Blues” and “St. Louis Blues”, right there in the bar. Lewie’s sister Nan, along with his brothers Luther, Morris and Wilbur, all played with greats such as Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton and Fats Waller. Steinberg himself was well-known around Memphis as a go-to bass player, being one of the first in Memphis to pick up electric bass, and playing with such notable acts as Phineus Newborn and Rufus Thomas, among others. Steve Cropper had been around Stax since the beginning, becoming Stewart’s right-hand man in the studio. Cropper took over A/R duties and took part in almost every recording Stax put out before 1970, as either an engineer, player or both. The combination of these four forces may have been accidental, but the combined chops each brought to the studio accounted for years of precision mastery, allowing each of them to know how the other would move.

Second, the cultural conditions were prime for reaching an expanded audience. 1962 found America in the throughs of the Civil Rights movement: sit-ins and church bombings. Rock and roll and grabbed it’s youth culture by the throat and teens had the buying power to make it last. New dances were being created everyday on national television to keep teens going for their wallets. The backbeat was king, with Memphis as it’s gilded palace, and while Memphis continued doing what it had done in it’s clubs all along, more and more people were itching for it on the radio, color line be damned. Yet, despite the color blindness of the studio atmosphere, it was still too taboo for bands to integrate on the bandstand. According to Steinberg, “You could cut a session in a day, and the same guys could be, you know.  And you playin’ across town somewhere, I couldn’t come sit in with you. I couldn’t play with you”. One can look at the success of “Green Onions”, and the ensuing successes of Booker T and The MGs, as one more step in the undoing of segregation. By 1965, the Civil Rights Bill did away with legal public separation, allowing members of the musical community to take what they were creating in the studio live to the masses. “Without them even knowing it at the time, it was a pretty big step in the civil rights movement”, adds Sampson. “Booker T. and the MGs were integrated, and Memphis at the time was so segregated, there were a lot of places they couldn’t go together. They couldn’t go to the zoo together, they couldn’t eat at the same places together, they couldn’t stay at the same hotels, but inside Stax Records they were a family. I think the fact that this integrated band had a million-selling hit was something that would have reverberations years later, and still today”.

Finally, there’s something oddly familiar about the underlying riff. It’s been said that there’s nothing new under the sun. Culture is always feeding off of sources, both foreign and familiar, putting new spins on old ideas. In the process of researching this article, I found myself in Memphis, at the Stax Museum. I picked up a copy of Green Onions on vinyl, admittedly having never listened to the entire album. I got home and threw it on the turntable to find what came out of the speakers was not what I had been expecting. What I heard was a chipmunk-esque organ, squealing over a bass line thumping at breakneck speed. Upon further inspection, I realized that I had the speed of my turntable cranked up to 45RPM, instead of the necessary 33RPM speed used to cut the album. I kept listening. In fact, I flipped the needle back and listened again. There was something so familiar about what I was hearing: I’ve heard that bass line somewhere else, but where? It wasn’t on a record; maybe it was in a movie, or on TV; I’m still not sure. I invite feedback on this point, for anyone who wants to try an experiment of their own, but I digress. The point is, I bet I’m not the only one to pick up on that. Once I put the record on at the right speed, I could still hear traces of that vaguely familiar groove, echoed in Cropper’s snarling guitar tone and subtly rocking back and forth between Jackson’s ride cymbal. People are drawn to the familiar, and if I caught onto it 50 years after the fact, imagine what it sounded like to the kids hearing it for the first time, in real time.

The events that transpired at Stax on that summer day in 1962 began as nothing more than four men doing what they do best: playing music. They held no allusions of grandeur; they were killing time. And why not? It was one more opportunity to develop a melodic idea, one more chance to play a lick that had been nagging at the back of someone’s mind, one more excuse to stick around just a little bit longer. The thing about   a good song is that you can’t predict when and where it will happen, but when the conditions are right, it only takes one to change the course of history. “It doesn’t take but one”, adds Steinberg, “the right one. You know, it’s a miracle and a blessing, that you can take a song that can last over fifty years and still sound as good today as it did then”.

Further Reading

Bowman, Rob, Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records, Schirmer Trade Books, New Tork, 1997

Guralnik, Peter, Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Back Bay Books, New York, 1986, pp. 112-128.

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Doris had the unlikely fortune of being discovered by James Brown, while she worked as an usherette at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater. At the time, she was writing and performing under the name of

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Doris Payne. After cutting a demo, she began shopping it around, starting with Sue Records. Unfortunately for Sue, they had lost ground in the R&B stream to bigger soul labels like Atlantic, Stax and Motown. Their lack of response to “Just One Look” caused Doris to bring her demo to Jerry Wexler, of Atlantic.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAqMKzWEgGI]

Wexler and everyone else went crazy. Immediately, plans were made to rush release “Just One Look” as a single, but since Doris was currently on the road with Chuck Jackson, she had no time to come back and recut it. The version the world came to know and love was the original demo she cut on a shoestring budget. From the moment that walking piano bass line is met by the riffing guitar and free-falling, high octave piano chords, the listener is in a soul-drenched pop heaven. Doris’ low mezzo voice dips down into the depths, before reaching high into an ecstatic cry, as the first line comes screaming at the audience. It’s a well-crafted pop line about instant attraction; the message is as direct as a clarion call, but the thing that really makes it is Troy’s vocal line. The melody takes an otherwise plain line and turns it into a memorable piece of pop that you can’t get out of your ears. You may have no idea where you’ve heard it before, or what exactly she’s saying, but when she hits that first phrase, you want to hear it again and again.

“Just one look, and I play online blackjack 21 fell so ha-a-aaaarrrrrdddd in love with yooouuuuuuuuu! Oh, oh! Oh, oh!”

It’s also important to know that this was a demo, not intended for radio play. This was meant to be shown to record labels, with the hopes of getting it re-cut professionally and released for radio play. Yet, had it been redone, some of the primal rawness of her scream would have been lost. When she hits those high notes, she’s actually topping out the mic she’s singing into, giving a small amount of tinny feedback on top. The overall mix is great, but had it been recut by Atlantic, some of the rough edges would have been smoothed out, pushed back, other things enhanced, etc. The brightness and raw edge would have been missed, and in my mind, those are the things that make this song stand out.

Though Doris didn’t find lasting success in America, “Just One Look” climbed to #10 on the Billboard charts in 1963. Her true fan base was in the UK, where Brit pop/rock band The Hollies recut “Just One Look” in 1964, sending it to the #2 spot in Britain and eventually #44 on the American charts. In the years since its original release, it has subsequently been covered by Anne Murray, Linda Ronstadt Lynda Carter, Lulu, Harry Nilsson and others.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGLeAhOE6M8&feature=related]

I think it’s important to note, that although you would expect to hear this song in the same itunes playlist as Ray Charles and Etta James, when I recently created a Genius Mix using “Just One Look”, other artists that appeared in the mix were Buddy Holly, The Allman Brothers, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground, cementing the fact that this song was instrumental in bridging the gap between Pop and R&B, even before the Philadelphia sound of the 70s.

Between Buddy Holly’s plane crash and Bob Dylan’s emergence as our newest folk hero, a slew of girl groups and one hit wonders kept our feet tapping along with the beat. Though most of them weren’t ever responsible for putting pen to paper, Doris Troy stands out as a trailblazer for female singer/songwriters. Unbeknownst to her, “Just One Look” would become an important piece of America’s vivid musical patchwork quilt.

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At the console recording "Red Headed Stranger"

In my mind, the West sounds like a jangly acoustic guitar. The sun coming up over the Rockies, as it slowly unrolls over the jagged peaks and dips, melting over the dirty sagebrush, actually has a sound. It expands out, from the inner ear, down through the heart, between the lungs and lower spinal column, all the way to the tips of my boots, bleeding out onto the warm ground. The sound of the West is lonesome, almost by choice, stained by some unnamed sadness. Never being one to jump on the bandwagon too soon, for fear that it might lose a wheel, I waited until last month to pick up Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. Not to worry though, I did it the right way: I found it on vinyl, as God intended, and had my first encounter through the crackling speaker of my hi-fi. In a time of slick production and large-scale schlock, Willie managed to re-invent the wheel, creating a new standard for story, song and America’s greatest legacy: the cowboy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RIvczrESrU&feature=related]

Up to 1975, Nelson had little success as a performer. He was known around Nashville as a songwriter, having penned such early 60s hits as, “Hello Walls” (Faron Young), “Night Life” (Ray Price) and “Crazy” (Patsy Cline). He had left Nashville, retiring to Austin, TX in the early 70s. Not satisfied, he began performing locally and became a huge draw with his eclectic style of outlaw country. A new recording contract with Columbia in 1975 gave him full artistic control of any album he put out, resulting in the greatest country concept album of all time. Red Headed Stranger tells the story of a

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preacher-turned-outlaw, spurned by his wife for another man. He kills the pair and flees, meeting and killing a feisty blonde along the way. The years whittle away, and he ends up in Colorado, meeting and falling in love with another woman. The redemption he never expected, found him in a bar, much like the one he fled from earlier. It is a happy ending, tinged with the fleeting memory of his first love. Despite skepticism from Columbia, the album soared to the top of the charts, both country and mainstream.

The contrasts between Stranger and any given Nashville album from the time are stark. Whereas any given Nashville album was loaded down with lush orchestrations and polished vocals, Stranger is stripped down to its essentials. Nelson’s nylon-stringed guitar plays throughout, sometimes accompanied by his sister Bobbie on barroom piano and bass, often times plucking solo. Tambourines and snares walk in and out of the room, while Nelson’s voice growls out the tale, sounding like a weathered medicine man in need of a tonic. He’s the cowboy sitting at the back of the bar, half-hidden by shadow. You’d sit and talk with him if you were certain his pistol were holstered. He tells the story as if he had been there watching it himself. Hell, he probably was.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP1mtxAi6No&feature=related]

Not only did Nelson have a way with a pen, but he also had a knack for picking songs. Only a handful on the album are originals, while the rest were carefully laid in between, creating one fluid line. Part of the brilliance of Stranger is its continuity; every song sounds like one of Willie’s, crafted for the occasion and sung by no one else. Everyone from Fred Rose to Bach are covered, and none sound out-of-place. Listeners can concentrate on the songs singularly, or delve into the story and let them play out imaginatively.

There have been other concept albums, both before and after Red Headed Stranger. Unlike the rest, Willie Nelson was able to marry multiple works from varied times and places, flipping the coin on the listener and flipping the bird to the record industry. In a time when country music had out-polished its own turd, Red Headed Stranger proved that you didn’t need the biggest console to make the best record. It’s simple and elegant, stated clean and carrying a time-tested weight. The cowboy, not the one in rhinestone and fringe, but the one who once roamed the plains, had come home to a powerful and lasting redemption.

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There are certain questions that hover beneath the surface of everyone’s psyche. The daily questions of, “what am I eating today?” and “where will I sleep tonight?”, ride high alongside deeper philosophical queries such as, “who am I?”, “why is there pain in the world?” and “what is my purpose?”. Going even deeper than that, in fact so deep that most people fail to realize it is a valid question, is the eternal quandary, “WHAT IS A ‘HOOCHIE COOCHIE MAN’?” It’s true; if you are versed in the American idiom of blues, you have asked yourself this question, and if not, I’m prepared to give you an answer anyways. To be sure, Muddy Waters is THE Hoochie Coochie man, and Willie Dixon will attest to that.

Muddy Waters brought electric blues into being. He took the delta blues and plugged them into a beat up, dirty amplifier, blasting them high above the din and fog in Chicago’s South Side night clubs. He put Chess Records on the map, and alongside session player/composer Willie Dixon, Leonard Chess, Little Walter and a whole cast of musicians, Chicago put its own stamp on swampy blues. In 1954, he released “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man”, which became his biggest hit. It reached #8 on Billboard’s Black Singles chart, staying for 13 weeks. Over the course of his career, he made up to 30 different recordings of it, each one a little different. When he was asked over to England in the late 50s, his ramped up blues performances were toned down to fit the “folk singer” mold they had placed him in. His subsequent appearances at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival proved that his audiences were becoming increasingly more white; he was crossing over.

So, what does he mean when he calls himself a “hoochie coochie man”? The origins of the term date back to the

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Chicago World’s Fair, in 1893. A then popular dance, the Hoochie Coochie was seen as a vulgar display of sexuality to be outlawed. It was danced by women, therefore, a “hoochie coochie man” was either someone who watched, or organized said women, like a pimp of sorts. In either scenario, the man is seen as a very sexual being, displaying his power over women. You don’t have to listen for very long to realize that Muddy Waters was a sexual human being who enjoyed being both subject and spectator. The structure of the song is built around a stop-time verse, followed by a refrain chorus. It is a sensual dance around a pit of fire. The stomping rhythm carries an attitude that can’t be stopped, paired with Muddy’s cutting guitar riffs and Little Walters wailing electric harmonica, each is a voice screaming at the top of its lungs. There’s never a fight for control, because each piece involved knows that Muddy’s voice is in charge. This is one of the many songs written for Chess artists by its house songwriter, Willie Dixon. Not only did he play almost every, if not every, bass line in the Chess catalog, but he is responsible for much of the blues sound we think of today.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO4A6xx65WU]

There you have it; the answer to one of life’s most carnal questions. Next week, I’ll solve the problem of poverty.

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The American dream can be described with many different pen strokes. It’s package looks a little different, depending on who it’s being delivered to, but beneath the colorful wrapping paper, it always looks the same. Freedom isn’t something that can be gripped with both hands; it’s indescribable, but you know it when you feel it. For some it means owning a piece of land, being able to speak your mind, or having the right to cast a ballot. Sometimes it’s as simple as being able to open your eyes next to someone else, knowing you’ll be letting them go forever before the day is over. “Me and Bobby McGee” is the embodiment of the American dream, coming to terms with its own identity.

Kris Kristofferson was a jack-of-all-trades, but the one thing he couldn’t seem to do was write a hit. A pilot, Rhodes Scholar, star athlete, father, husband, drinker and lover, writer and picker, he found himself flying helicopters in and out of the Gulf of Mexico for an oil company, trying to meet ends. By this time, he had lost his family to his failing music career, having shuffled up and down Music Row to no avail. His staff writer position with Combine Records hadn’t been able to throw him a bone yet and it wasn’t looking promising any time soon. The owner of Combine was Fred Foster, and in a moment of clarity, he called Kris. Catching him on his way out-of-town, Fred gave Kris a song title, “Me and Bobby McGee”. Of course, Kris did what any competent songwriter would have done: he hid. He left for the Gulf and kept a low profile from Foster, knowing he would have to come up with something out of that title, but having no idea what that would be. As a writer, I can honestly say, it’s hard to write on command, much like burping the alphabet. Certain things have to be available to you, like inspiration (or in the case of burping, a readily accessible stream of air). So Kris hid.

The song finally came to fruition, and it grew from a variety of sources. He claims influence from a road movie, mixed with pieces of a Mickey Newbury song running through his mind, and a shot of experience with a woman for flavor. Along the way, he picked up a line here and there until it was complete.

“I hid from Fred for a while but I was trying to write that song all the time I was flying around Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I had the rhythm of a Mickey Newbury song going in the back of my mind, ‘Why You Been Gone So Long,’ and I developed this story of these guys who went around the country kind of like Anthony Quinn and Giuletta Masina in (Fellini’s) La Strada. At one point, like he did, he drove off and left her there. That was ‘Somewhere near Salinas, I let her slip away.’ Later in the film he (Quinn) hears a woman hanging out her clothes, singing the melody she (Masina) used to play on the trombone, and she told him, ‘Oh, she died.’ So he goes out, gets drunk, gets into a fight in a bar and ends up on the beach, howling at the stars. And that was where ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’ came from, because he was free from her, and I guess he would have traded all his tomorrows for another day with her.”

The missing piece came to him on the way back to Nashville, driving through a heavy rain…

“I went, ‘With them windshield wipers slapping time and Bobby clapping hands we finally sang up every song the driver knew.’ And that was it.”

This was the turning point for Kris. In a short time it was in the hands of multiple recording artists, beginning with Roger Miller in 1969, who took it to #12 on the US country charts. Gordon Lightfoot was hot on his tracks with a version that went to #1 on the pop and #13 on the country charts across Canada. Everyone from The Grateful Dead to Pink to Jerry Lee Lewis have had their own go ’round with the tune, but the one most remembered and revered will always be the version found on Janis Joplin’s solo album, Pearl.

Joplin had a voice that would grate on asphalt and a spirit that couldn’t be tamed. She lived as rough as any song she sang, keeping up with any man who would cross her path. She died far too young from a life that was way to heavy for one person’s arms, Heroin being the only thing that could take her. No one nor nothing else could keep a hold on her, which is why “Me and Bobby McGee” will always be her song. She died before

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Pearl was finished, making the song both her only #1 hit and the second song in history to be named so posthumously. She recorded it without Kristofferson’s knowledge; they were friends and sometimes lovers, her imprint being found between certain lines. He didn’t know she had recorded it until the day after her death, when he heard it on the radio. It’s fitting that this became her swan song, soaring higher than the rest, and telling a little more about what could have been had she not left the party so soon.

For me, the American dream lies somewhere between bittersweet and hard-fought. For Kris and Janis, I think it was similar, with open roads and time alone in between. Freedom is a double-edged sword, one side being the one we long for, the other being the side we know we have to face. One can’t be had without the other. Freedom really is just one more word for nothing left to lose. It’s already gone, and that is the price of the purest form of freedom. Take all this for what you will; spoken from a girl who hasn’t tasted it yet.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMhnl0__Vo]

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