[Heard here http://www.mixcloud.com/nick-thomas2/sounds-from-the-cloudno-to-the-g-word-special1-aug-2013redruth-radio/ AND here on Feb 13, 2014: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/54428 ]
As a novice of songwriting, I'm finding every composition involves some unique inception story, and this one's no exception. [Probably true, too, for veteran and masterful songwriters, but I only know it of my greenhorn experience.] I'd been thinking for a while I wanted to cover Neil Young's "After the Goldrush," a beautifully simple song I dearly love to harmonize with whenever I hear it. But I wanted some unique angle to covering it and determined it might work very nicely to a reggae rhythm.
A text file where I kept Young's lyrics was where I'd also stowed a four-line start to a poem idea of mine. While I was scanning through "Goldrush" and fitting it to my reggae beat, I noticed my own stanza fit with the rhythm just as smoothly. So I got to work writing four additional verses with a couple of repeated chorus lines and a minor-key melody and, voila!, a wholly original, multi-track piece emerged that employs most all of my instrument arsenal plus some percussion loops.
It's always said you need to "write what you know." Well, the story I share below takes a page directly from personal experience several years ago.
LOVE REIGNED
I had settled in the City of Angels,
But a lucifer whisked me away
To a Second City, so windy, no pity.
Soon he left me one fall day.
That was a time past passed through.
Such a dark and a hard time on my way to you.
All alone and on edge in Evanston,
Edge of winter and of the Lake;
As the nights grew longer, my hurt grew stronger.
My heartbeat kept me awake.
That was a time past passed through.
Such a dark and a hard time on my way to you.
Came a day in May at the waterside:
The tears spilling down my face
Turned from pain to joy on that rocky shore
Within a flow of a glorious grace.
That was a time past passed through.
Such a right and a light time, I'm on my way to you.
I felt love washing all around me
Deep connection to every thing.
To each grain of sand, to the family of man
And every atom in between.
That was a time past passed through.
Such a right and a light time, I'm coming to you.
I floated home to my carriage house
With a great grin for all I greet
That's returned in kind, and now forgiven behind
Me is that devil in his defeat.
That was a time past passed through.
Such a right and a light time on my way to you.
[On my way to you/ On my way to you / On my way to you
I'm on my way to you / I'm coming to you / Coming to you]
