Maybe Grief's A Black Dove
A new song: Lay Them All Down
On the one hand, I’m reticent to overexplain my songwriting, as much for fear of spooking the muse as for fear of shattering any magic they may possess or imposing my meaning on something that—once released—ceases to be mine to define. It’s like doing a magic trick enshrouded in misty fog and shadows. And then turning on the house lights and walking the audience step-by-step through each sleight of hand and false wall. Informative, yes. But maybe misunderstanding what makes magic magic.
On the other hand, my roots are in folk music, where the performance is as much about the between-song banter and song setups as the actual songs. Even then, it’s a balance. I’ve been asked to sing in church quite a few times and have found, recently, that I almost always end up doing a little spoken intro of some kind. Maybe it settles my nerves. Maybe it’s just me trying to compensate for knowing that I don’t have a Knock ‘Em Out voice. I guess I feel like I’m setting up listeners for a more intimate, more immersive, deeper experience?
So.
To split the difference between the two hands, please, may I first ask of you, go listen to the brand new song “Lay Them All Down” that I co-wrote with my friend Ryan Innes. And, after you’ve listened, if you feel satisfied, then by all means leave the remainder of this newsletter unread, go for a walk, listen to the song again (or recommend it to a friend!), pour yourself a cup of tea and think about the bubbles, whatever floats your boat. The song alone can be enough, I’m sure of that.
Here it is on Spotify:
And here it is on Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/lay-them-all-down/1657290061?i=1657290062
(I’m not sure why Spotify has a fancy embedded thingie and Apple Music doesn’t; maybe that’s how they spend all the royalties they don’t pay artists?)
OK.
If you’re still reading, then I’ll assume you’re up for some navel-gazing and behind-the-scenes talk.
So I’ve always wanted to write a blessing-type song, enamored by masterful, compassionate, empathetic songs like Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”, Glen Hansard’s “Winning Streak”, and John Martyn’s “May You Never.” Interesting that two of those songwriters are from Ireland and neighboring-ish Scotland, as I’ve always categorized this type of song as a sort of Irish blessing (maybe most famous is “May The Road Rise Up To Meet You”), though they certainly don’t own the patent on outward blessings. They’re just the strain I’m more familiar with.
Invoking the word “blessing” can bring on a dimension of religiosity—the book of Numbers in the Bible features a priest’s blessing, “May the Lord bless and guard you.” My high school choir sang a song that drafted off of that, called “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”, at the end of our performances. I suppose that benedictory warmth, from way back in the 90s, sowed a seed. Ryan and I, in writing this song, were looking for a similar feel—something to end a show with, a hymn of sorts, to send an audience on their way with whatever blessing we might conjure.
That’s where it started: the desire to send off friends and family and audiences with a blessing and some grace. A warm goodnight, if you will.
Confession: I’m an awkward goodbye in person. You probably know that. Which is why writing a song to (attempt to) articulate feelings and Be The Hug You Wish To See In The World makes sense. Songs have always been my stab at saying what I can’t say, weird as that may sound. I write a decent thank you note and a solid email, but can be lost for words in the moment. Songwriters are lucky. We get to say what we wish we’d said and pass it off as what we always say. Cheaters, all of us.
As Ryan and I sifted through what it might mean to try to “bless” people, we bounced through all kinds of stuff. Some of it was too idealistic. Some got a little too out there. Some risked getting too sentimental, too saccharine. We tried to find the balance, which I think is where the song starts, a balancing act:
May you learn more than you lose
May you love the things you choose
May your sorrow come with wings
A blessing is mostly meaningful in contrast to what else life throws at us. Loss. Sorrow. Grief. We wanted to acknowledge that side of life and counter with learning, love, wings. But not in an “everything happens for a reason” or other toxic positivity kind of way. In an acknowledging, empathetic way. That’s where my favorite line in the song goes:
Maybe grief’s a black dove.
You don’t mourn what you didn’t love.
It’s the duality. It’s the contrast of frigid hands by a warm fire or a candle in the darkness. Ugh, I’m overexplaining the song, I know. There was a poignant line in the tv series Wandavision, as the main character Wanda Maximoff was processing her grief over losing both the love of her life (Vision, an android, don’t think too much about it, she’s a witch, ok?) and her brother. The line, which comes as Wanda goes through a very unique version of self-therapy, says “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Give that writer an Emmy. So good.
So…grief. I played a show last month and a friend in one of the other bands came up afterwards and said, “Man, there was a lot of death in that set, Paul.” It hadn’t felt particularly heavy to me (especially compared to shows immediately following my brother’s passing when I couldn’t get through songs without breaking up in tears), but it dawned on me that, as a fortysomething, a significant chunk of my artistic expression is processing grief and confronting mortality. Live long and enough and people you love will pass, before their time. We tell the stories we have to tell, I suppose.
In the multi-year process of writing this song, our friend Pat Campbell passed suddenly, as I’ve documented and mourned here and elsewhere. Wiping our eyes at his funeral, surrounded by people who loved Pat and his family, and hearing fantastic Pat Stories, we found our second verse:
May you fill a room with friends.
May they love you past the end,
Where the tears and laughter blend.
Those stories will be ours
Written in our bones and blood and stars.
1994. My high school choir is singing “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” in the East High School auditorium. Meanwhile, somewhere in California, Tom Petty sits down and writes a blessing song of his own, the great “Wildflowers.” (The key difference between his song and “Lay Them All Down”, besides the fact that his is world famous, being that he wrote “Wildflowers” as an absolute ad-lib, writing it AS HE SANG IT, while ours took, you know, FOUR YEARS.) Petty later said he didn’t know at the time that he was actually singing to himself. “You belong somewhere you feel free.” He was the you. He was in crisis and struggling and needed to hear those words just as much as anyone else, he realized. I believe there’s some of that in our chorus, Ryan and I singing to others but also very much singing to ourselves:
Lay, lay them all down
The troubles you’ve found
Say, say them out loud
Your faith and your doubts
In whispers and shouts
Permission to let go of all the crud that’s keeping you down? Granted. Permission to vent. Permission to wonder, pray, doubt, cry, scream at the top of your lungs. All of it. “You deserve the deepest of cover. You belong in that home by and by.”
It’s our end-of-year blessing to anyone, to all of you, a virtual/musical hug on your way out 2022’s door.
You’re still here? Really?
Fine. I listened to Paul Simon’s interview with Malcolm Gladwell on Audible this year and it was mostly great. I say “mostly” because I got really tripped up by the way Simon talked about “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” All these years and Grammys and millions of albums sold and international adoration and, still, Simon’s hide was notably chapped by the fact that his former buddy/sometime frenemy/current nemesis Art Garfunkel sang it. Dude was rankled 50 years later.
Gladwell even humors Simon and you get to hear Simon’s re-recording of what he believes should be THE version. (Spoiler: it’s not.) It was fine, I guess. But there’s a reason the world loves to hear Artie sing it, why the Aretha Franklin version slays. The song—its gorgeous melody especially—thrives when you have a real-deal singer take it on. No offense whatsoever to Paul Simon as a vocalist. I swear by Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints and on and on. I’ve even been known to stan for his late-period records like the criminally underrated You’re The One and Stranger To Stranger. Furthermore, I don’t (and likely won’t) own a single Art Garfunkel solo album. He just happens to be the perfect voice for “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, as well as an all-time perfect harmony singer (no wonder Simon had to recruit ringers like Linda Rondstadt, Cissy Houston, the Dixie Hummingbirds, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Everly Brothers, and Milton Nascimento for his post-Garfunkel recordings.)
Simon couldn’t be content with just having written one of the greatest songs ever. It wasn’t enough. And it’s a shame.
Why do I tell you this?
Because I genuinely love to sing “Lay Them All Down.” And because we tried recording “Lay Them All Down” as a duet. But, ultimately, it just…lacked. My ego chimed in, “but it’s YOUR song too, man!” True. And maybe someday Malcolm Gladwell will come hound me to release my Simon-esque version, who knows?
But what’s right for the song? What does the song justice?
As a songwriter, I spend a lot of time, in writing, trying to make sure I stay out of the way of the song. So the recording should do the same. And, well, it turns out, when you can have a real-deal singer like Ryan Innes—with his soulful golden, Knock ‘Em Out pipes—sing your song, you just do it. This one feels right. Ryan’s vocal has the gravity. It has the heart. It’s our gift to you as the year closes.
CREDITS:
Written by Ryan Innes & Paul Jacobsen
Engineered, mixed, & produced by Scott Wiley at June Audio in Provo, Utah
Piano, vocals: Ryan Innes
Rubber bridge guitar, harmony vocals: Paul Jacobsen
Bass, electric guitar: Stuart Maxfield
Drums: Aaron Anderson
Additional synths and goodness: Scott Wiley