My latest CD project gets underway in the middle of May. I’ll be back at Joel Whitten’s Metal Shed Studio in Baton Rouge to record some new songs. It’s really weird and wonderful this time around. When I wrote the Songs for Gilead Valley, I spent weeks trying to incorporate some of the blues themes that I was learning after having listened for months on end to the old records of Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Tommy Johnson and so on. But this time, most of the songs I wrote were all hammered out in just one night.
One day, I was baking a batch of bread and listening to the Whitmark recordings of Bob Dylan. These are some vintage raw demos that he did in the early 60’s and I just loved how straightforward his songwriting was. Dylan simply strummed and sang verses that he obviously penned quickly. Some of it was crude, but a lot of it was brilliant. After a few hours I thought to myself, “Man, I should be able to write stuff like that.” So I went to the computer and just decided to empty my mind all at once. In fact I didn’t even try to make it sensible or even edit it. I just dumped out words on the screen. After about three hours of doing this, I came up with six or seven songs. It was incredible. I’ve always thought that it was necessary to be very thoughtful and clever whenever you want to write a song. And though that is often true, it doesn’t have to be. There is a lot of great stuff out there in the cosmic consciousness, as long as you’re willing to let it flow out and not judge it.
A couple of days later I worked up rhythm and melodies to the verses and the songs were done. Though I wasn’t trying to write in any particular style, I realize that the tunes were coming out folksier than the Gilead Valley material. Since I’ve been interested in the wisdom of A Course in Miracles for many years, I also realize that some of my lyrics have a kind of Course theme to them. One in particular is an anthem-like tune called “The Real World.”
“When I close my eyes it’s clear as day
Nothing here can stand in the way
If you could only hear & trust what I say
Come on, my friend, there’ll be a real world someday
Why wait for heaven
When love is around
Why wait for heaven
There’s a real world now”
In fact, my friend Marnia Robinson (reuniting.info) who is also a Course student recently sent me song ideas that she wrote some twenty years ago. In following the same desire to express feelings from the Course she wrote one I really like entitled “Now is the Time.” I noodled around with the lyrics a few days ago and a melody just flowed out effortlessly. It’s great stuff. She wrote,
“Now is the time, spread your wings and fly
Sail through the stars, there’s nothing too high
Lift up your eyes, cast your gaze to the sky
All of your dreams can come true if you try
From above, all is love
We are one…
It is begun.”
So why is the record going to be titled, “Lightning on the Earth”? Here’s the story: I recently became interested in the information on healing relationships through Marnia’s website. And one of the things that really impressed me is the idea that most men need to learn to heal themselves around the issue of sexuality and women. The image of lightning on the earth came to me while watching a storm one night. I saw a flash hit a tree and it felt like this tremendous male energy grounding and balancing itself in alignment with the female (earth). I realized that this was symbolic of what I’d been working on in myself. So the song, “Lightning on the Earth” is a lively bluegrass tune that expresses the joy a woman feels when a man begins to love her purely, like ‘lightning on the earth’. I’m currently scouting around for the right woman to record the vocal for me. What’s neat is that my friend, Adrian Percy from the band, the Fugitive Poets, is going to help me out with the recording, playing some guitar licks and banjo. Now if I can just entice Steve Smith to come back in the studio and do some of his harmonica and incredible acoustic G-licks, it will be even better. More later…
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