I auditioned for a gig as a lounge singer once.
It was at a local hotel and they were looking for someone to sing in the bar each evening. Because I used to beat on a guitar as part of my radio show - and they had heard it - they wanted to know if I could actually entertain.
Nope.
No confidence at all in whatever musical talent I thought I had.
I wrote poems and songs for my show like this:
All the great philosophers have written down their thoughts
As to why a life of celibacy should not make me distraught
They say that I’d be wiser, that there’s a pile of mud
The only wiser I ever got belonged to my good friend Bud.
That was part of a song written with a friend and co-worker called Looking at Love Through the Bottom of a Bud.
Budweiser. You got that, right? Hey, you write country music, you need a drinkin’ song.
We also wrote songs called I’m in Love With a Polled Hereford Queen (I was dating the National Polled Hereford queen at the time) and Let’s Go to Jekyll and Hide, a song about Jekyll Island, Georgia.
Life in South Georgia.
I’d love to have been a songwriter. I gravitate toward people that can turn a phrase.
My mom sent me a little part of my past this week.
I don’t remember writing it, but she suspects it was my early teenage years. The title indicates it was likely written around Easter though it seems to have nothing to do with Easter.
Unless you celebrate with salmon.
I’m glad she saved it. Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to my former self.
She sent it because we were talking about John Prine’s passing this week, and I was wondering how he got comfortable with some pretty goofy lyrics he is known and loved for.
I was a big John Prine fan. Mom’s not so familiar with him, but she is a big fan of Bob Dylan and knows Dylan was a big John Prine fan.
If you talk with your mom often enough, you can cover a lot of territory.
Prine’s lyrical genius is what I wanted for myself. Instead, you get this:
Looking ‘cross that pasture at that big ol’ hunk of cow
She is such a beauty, I’d love to love her now
She won’t even look at me with her big brown eyes
She just flares her nostrils and swats away the flies.