It was a joke.
Songs often start as a way to amuse myself. It’s that or the Loneliness. I was trying to write a parody of…let’s call it ‘arena folk’ or ‘bluegrass pop’. Kind of music that has, like, ten white guys whistlin’ before shoutin’ ‘hey!’ together, all a-clappin’. You know what I’m talking about; maybe you don’t but you do.
I must have heard something twangy in the end credits of something else while reading a Bobby Braddock memoir. It put me in a particular mood.
So I had myself a good laugh and that was that. Few weeks later, with the context of ‘joke’ forgotten, I revisited the chord progression super-seriously as if it were some masterpiece, played it Andy-speed (slow) on the ‘coustic, and recorded it on my cell phone:
And then: didn’t think about it again for a few years.
I recorded it ‘properly’ (ha ha) one afternoon, keeping the same straightforward guitar-and-voice thing, except I used my Telecaster due to, um, me not knowing how to mic my acoustic non-shittily. It works better with acoustic guitar. Here’s 4 chronological examples:
I’m not going to list songs, but I listen to a lot of 90s/00s ‘college’ alt rock that I’m sure were at one point included in some Now That’s What I Call Horseshit! compilation. And I like them un-ironically, which is the great part. I’m not embarrassed. Having both really good and really bad taste is an incredible skill. So I was probably listening to ‘Little Black Backpack’ by Stroke 9 when I came up with the second half of ‘Sick Again’.
My ‘rendition’:
One day I’m looking through my emails and notebook pages full of very deep and emotional lyrics and come upon a few lines from an unrelated song. Next to them, in more recent ink, I had written
change ‘have’ to ‘had’ ?? (
maybe)
For whatever reason in that moment, those four words felt right for the song, like it made the most sense in the world. It solved the whole puzzle. My throat closed up like I was watching Mamá Coco hearing her father’s song1. I sang 'change have to had’ into the second half immediately.
There are about 7 takes where you can hear me crying. For better or worse, I comp’d out all the quivering, breaking, sniffling.
To be clear, it’s not a lyric. It’s an editorial note about a grammatical change. It’s like any other note to self, a reminder to pick up batteries, take out the trash. Here’s a sample of it, voice and guitar isolated:
It was the chorus I needed staring me right in the nose because it wasn’t confident enough to make eye contact. I copy/pasted a part of it in between the two verses, and wouldn’t you know it: song structure!
Listening to it now still makes me vaguely emotional. Not as emotional as every single time when I watch that scene from Coco, but still. It’s the connective tissue that makes the whole thing work, born from marginalia (and chance (and disorganization)). That’s cool to me. It’s also overt in its obviousness, and per a rule I made for myself, I’m glad I gave in to what it wanted to be.
For a brief time there I bounced out versions of the song as ‘Past Perfect’ . What it is about those four words is it’s not really the words themselves but that I felt compelled at all to write them, like it was necessary or more truthful to tell myself that the life I knew was behind me, relegated into the past by a simple switch in tense. What is true is suddenly true no more.
We move people back and forth like that. Feels so much like time traveling, the words we use everyday.
Imagine changing ‘had’ back to ‘have’.
[Below is ‘Sick Again’ in its entirety. I’m adding a paywall here because it’s not quite ready for primetime consumption just yet. Not worth your $$$ don’t even think about it!]
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