Sometimes you start to make something and you don't see what it is until it's out, as it were.
I believe that often a song isn't something you make so much as it's something that reveals itself to you as whole cloth if not in meaning alone.
I'm not retirement age but the first line sang itself out, “I’ve given up days down at the place.” And then, sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy, seemed an apt enough follow up. I stole that from John Denver. Then there was a character, a sensible one. One who’d retired and new what made them happy.
“I'm takin’ in things. I'm finding my pace, looking out over the valley.”
I still didn't know. But by then there was a place, a valley to look over.
2nd verse. “I ain't in line. I'm just standing by. And I don't need what you're havin’.”
That's how some people I know talk. Where I work, because it's departmentalized work all done in the same space, there can be a fair amount of standing by. And almost nobody retires.
The rest of the song just came conversationally out. By the time I got to, “Just standing by…” I knew who it was and where it was and it could all just come out.
It was someone who used to do what I do who lives in a valley and is retired.
Mad Woman Gulch is a real place I have never been, so it got to remain as a thing in my imagination. I know a guy who lives there. He used to drink and fuss about the kinds of things people tend to stop fussing about and knuckle under eventually. There are all kinds of things in this world that don’t make any sense or are not fair or are unbeleiveably weighted against the common person. If you stop keening against them you lose, but it’s a common loss. It’s the kind of loss everybody suffers and then you have commiseration.
It seems incredibly unlikely that if you were to keep going on and on about how your world would be if it was fair that the world would just turn over and let you scratch its belly and snuggle, but sometimes it does I guess.
The place of peace in song is often a metaphore for heaven, some place of eternal reward, the thing you get if you did everything right. I posit that maybe it’s just a place where not only is everything tolerable, but there aren't any of the common unfairnesses everybody knuckles under. Maybe there’s a quiet place where you can get all your needs met, a place where you can smoke on the porch and look out at the world and see that it’s beautiful and know that’s enough.
Some people are just that lucky. Some people are only lucky enough to know someone who is.
You know who you are.
I’ve given up days down at the place. Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy. I’m takin’ in things. I’m finding my pace lookin’ out over the valley. I said I ain’t here to get mine. I meant I ain't here to get mine. I ain’t in line. I’m just standing by, and I don’t need what you’re havin’. Naw, you can keep that yourself. No, I don’t mind. I’ve got some out at the cabin. Hang your head over the valley. Hear the wind blow. Hang your head over the valley. Hear the wind blow. Things ain’t the same lookin’ up close. But out here at night it’s heaven almost. Hang your head over the valley. Hear the wind blow. Hang your head over the valley. Hear the wind blow. Hear the wind blow. Hear the wind blow. I’ve given up days down at the place. Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy. Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy. Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy.
Dustin Busch plays pedal steel. He said coming into the session, “I’m gonna try some Daniel Lanois s**t.” It works.
Justin Laduc of course played only cymbals with mallets. That works too.
The most important players to me on this one are the birds. In the early spring when the ground thaws and the bugs start moving around again the birds come back and the still cold nights of winter lift. Just as soon as there’s a hint of blue in the morning sky the birds start to sing. I got up at dawn and recorded four minutes of birds in my still asleep town in May. As the summer goes on you forget there are bugs and birds singing all the time until you are trying to record something, unless what you are trying to record is four minutes of birds at dawn.
A buddy I run things past to see what he thinks said the song was great, but get rid of the birds.
No, I said.
Its on an album that came out on December 18th on Bandcamp and will be on all the streaming and purchase services in January when the elves get all caught up with their other records. Til then you'll have to get it here, on Bandcamp.
Also there’s a video.
