The Sunday Song: New Year's Song/1990

I wrote this in 1994. We were living in Alabama at the time, while we went to grad school. A lot of the stuff I was writing back then was kind of like "short stories as songs," very under the influence of folkies like Bill Morrissey; this song in particular is one of those.

Needless to say, it's entirely fictional; I was seven years old in 1978. It's supposed to be a tale told from the point of view of a man on New Year's Eve in 1990, looking back at 1978 and looking at where his life is on that day.

Download audio file (NewYearSong.mp3)
– download "New Year's Song/1990″ (mp3)

This was one of the tracks of an album called "The Land of Red Barns," all of which had that short story vibe, pretty much. I have never recorded decent versions of most of them, and I am making it a project to get all the couple hundred songs I have written recorded and maybe even out there somewhere, so here's this one.

Music geek stuff from here forward…:

The AT4033 for an ambient mic, towards the back of the room. Main vocals on the ATM41HE, and a Digital Reference instrument mic pointed at the guitar (the Blueridge jumbo cutaway). Guitar and vocals were recorded simultaneously to a drum loop used as a click track. The female vocal is actually my voice through the DigiTech Vocalist Live 4, recorded as an overdub. I also overdubbed the violin (played on the keyboard… couldn't get my MIDI guitar to work for some reason!) and a bass part.

Haven't gotten around to EQ'ing it or mixing it really, just tossed a bit of reverb on it here and there and panned the tracks. I did it all last night, and I really should re-do the main vocal independent of the guitar, too, so I can actually pay attention to the notes I am hitting. It's been years since I played this one.

Lyrics & chords below. The "A add E" is x07650 in tablature. I also play the F#7 as xx4320, but all the other chords are basically open, no barres up the neck or anything. It's fingerpicked, of course.

It was in the summer 1978                                                                  Bm A

I met her taking the pup to the Hatfield vet                                 Bm A

It was raining outside and we both were wet                               Bm A

Her arms crossed on a plaid flannel shirt                                      E G

Legs crossed under a denim skirt                                                      E G

She was reading Tolkien and tore a page                                        E G

I wrote my number on the scrap and gave it back                     C C7 F#7 AaddE

And it's been a dozen years, been a dozen years                        Bm A E Bm A E

Funny how time moves slow                                                              A F#7 A F#7

It takes forever for faith to grow                                                       A F#7 A Fmaj7

Here's the indentation, this finger, this hand                               C G

This is where I wear my wedding band                                           E

We hiked around campus in '78

Disco tunes played on acoustic guitars

The U Mass quad, the dog, frisbees and fires

We held hands to watch Mideast news

Kissed over the gearshift in a VW

Got our diplomas and made love to the moon

Traded mortarboard caps and laughed

When mine slipped and hit her nose

Chorus

Taking the dog out for a midnight walk

We used to snowmobile along this snow

Been a dozen years with no kids to show

Dog's feeling the ice in her bones

And maybe I am too and the Hatfield whores

Won't get their 20 bucks from me no more

Chorus

It was in the summer 1978

Met her taking the pup to the Hatfield vet