Working On A Song

Although I’m mainly a Farm & Fleet sort of fellow when it comes to music, I’ve recently had the opportunity to work on a song with jazz musician Geoffrey Keezer. It’s been an internet-based collaboration, with all communication via email (Geoffrey and I have never met, nor have we ever spoken, even on the phone).

After Geoffrey sent me an instrumental track, I put it on repeat and listened to it for a long time, trying to decide what I felt. I decided it made me feel like it was autumn and I was lonely. So I wrote this first verse:

Milkweed and heartbreak in the letterbox

Is the summer gone?

Will the snow fall to the sound of beating wings?

I thought I saw you at the corner shop

Ink and paper days

But you were floating far beyond the autumn haze.

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind

Far beyond me…forever turning

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind…your blue wind

Rest of the story and song (with audio) after the page break.

Next, I sent the lyrics to Geoffrey, to see if they meshed with what he had in mind. He said yep, so over the next few months I worked up the second and third verses, and a bridge. I wrote some of the lyrics in my little room over the garage, I wrote a few on the road, and I wrote most of the second verse and bridge while staying in what could be called a nice little shack in the woods (thank you friends who know who you are).

As I am musically illiterate, it’s tough to convey phrasing without just doing it, so when it was time to turn the completed song over to Geoffrey I recorded myself singing a scratch vocal over the musical track. It ain’t pretty, but here I am scratching (and occasionally false-starting) Verse Two:

Etendue Verse 2 (Mike scratch take)

Sometime well after midnight I finished the job, and from the room above the garage (just a softball-toss from a coopful of sleeping chickens) I hooked the the sound files to an email and sent them flying off to California, and Geoffrey went to work on his end, reworking the arrangement and evolving the melody (he is, after all, a jazz guy).

At some point you have to try the thing on, and the person recruited in this instance was vocalist Julia Dollison. On March 12, during an intimate concert in California, the song “Red Leaf” was performed for the first time, with Geoffrey on piano and Julia providing vocals.

For purposes of telling this story, Geoffrey and Julia have consented to let me post a recording of the song’s debut. For that I owe them a big thank you, because basically they are letting us listen in on a rehearsal. Julia had quite literally just met the song and she and Geoffrey ran through it only once that afternoon (for a listen to their definitive work, visit Geoffrey here and Julia here). You will understand, however, that for a guy whose guitar plays three chords and who considers stomping his boot to be a dance move, it’s otherworldly to hear my words handled with such grace and refinement. Whether the song finds a life beyond this one night, somewhere in Wisconsin a guy is feeding his chickens and smiling.

“Red Leaf” (first time performed live)

UPDATE: Since this post was composed, Julia and Geoffrey have continued to refine the arrangement of the song, and I want to thank them again for letting me post this “raw” version…when a finished version is available, we’ll sling it up here. Yep. P.S. it’s jazz so I think maybe the point is it is never “finished”? I’ll have to check in on that the next time I hang with some hep cats.

Complete lyrics:

Red Leaf

Milkweed and heartbreak in the letterbox

Is the summer gone?

Will the snow fall to the sound of beating wings?

I thought I saw you at the corner shop

Ink and paper days

But you were floating far beyond the autumn haze.

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind

Far beyond me…forever turning

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind…your blue wind

Two shoes in sunshine on a wooden floor

Oh, the door ajar

This year’s flowers brittle in the window box

The tree is naked and the bird has flown

No more coming home

I am dancing in the echo of your arms

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind

Far beyond you…forever turning

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind…your blue wind

bridge

And when the winter settles in

Firelight nights, the streetlamp’s yellow glow

Will you wonder where I am

Lean against the glass

Breathe away the frost

Green hills returning and the river wide

Resurrection time

As a new shoot presses cleanly through the earth

I hear a footfall on the flagstone path

Oh, a lover laughs

I am riding brave new heartbeats in the sky

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind

Far beyond you…forever turning

Like a red leaf…on a blue wind…your blue wind