At the Riverside

Sometimes you just have to take a plunge

At the Riverside. copyright GDrake 2012, Creative Commons (Attrib.) 
Released on Aunt G and the Stone City Nephews, 2014
Alma Drake - guitar, vocal
Dustin D. Busch - mandolin, extra coolness
Recorded and mixed by Pete C. Becker

Sometimes, you just have to say fuck it and take a leap.

This song is about my struggle to leave a toxic situation and get into an affirming one, and how it went pretty sideways for a while, but eventually, I made it.

I wrote the guitar part on a Cole-Clark Fat Lady 1, which came into the offices of the guitar magazine I worked for. In the process of writing my review, I tuned to CGDGBD and started playing, and this tune fell straight out of the guitar. The pickup system Cole-Clark has designed is a killah, so I was plugged into my LR Baggs acoustic guitar amp, which somehow kept getting louder and louder and louder … it sounded symphonic, galactic, as big and open as heaven itself and I could not get enough. I was home alone and just … didn’t care. My neighbor told me later that she could hear it inside her house, and it sounded AH-mazing. Yeah. Loud. Anyway, I got the lick down for this tune, wrote my review, and took the guitar back to the magazine the next day. Fortunately, it was purchased by one of my co-workers and remains here in town. What a sound!

When I was reviewing guitars, I stole so many songs out of them that I should be ashamed of myself. But I’m not. Guitars are friendly and open to those who touch them with great reverence and listen to them deeply. There were some that set my little heart a’flutter, gracious.

I love guitars for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that over 57 years of playing them (OMG! 57???) they have become wired into my nervous system as part of the way I communicate with the world. They are embedded now. It’s how I say “that which cannot be said,” because the English language is so short on words for the mystic, the emotional, the incredible, the magical. But music has all of those “words” built in and ready to use, and guitars are profoundly communicative.

Being a sound healer, I’m highly aware of the way sound moves energy and shifts e-motions. Emotions are energy that’s moving in the body, e-motion, energy in motion. Sound can be used to move that energy in healthier, calmer, more desirable ways - and yes, it can be used to enrage, to create fear, to cause overwhelm, to sell lies … Music has incredible power, and humans have historically not been great stewards of power. Maybe it’s a good thing that the popular music industry has degenerated to the pablum-shoveling, bullshit-spewing joke that it is today. Sadly, the good stewards of music’s power, the ones who can raise gooseflesh on an entire audience, cause hearts to swell and tears to flow, are often kept marginalized because false power fears nothing more than it fears Real Power.

But that’s a discussion for another day, and honestly Ted Gioia has that topic well covered, with more research, thoughtfulness and credibility than I could bring to it. Today, we are enjoying a simple riff about love lost and found, and celebrating the guitar that brought the song into this world.

Lyrics

Stand by me and watch the river run
Let the final rays of the evening sun
Rest lightly on your shoulders as we watch it glide
Like silver reflecting the twilight sky tonight
Take my hand and stay silent for a while
We don’t need anymore than silence now
You understand like nobody else 
You know me like I know myself

I got lost, went the wrong way
First time I tried to find you babe
Couldn’t get it right
Then I found you at the river side

Bridge was gone, didn’t know another route
Didn’t want to take the long way around
I knew the treacherous undertow
Is always waiting for fools who let go
And I am not a fool, unless it’s for love
I held my breath and wished myself luck
Muddy river washed me clean
I stumbled onto the shore again

I got lost, went the wrong way
First time I tried to find you babe
Couldn’t get it right
Then I found you at the river side

Stand by me and watch the river run
Laugh and say I’m crazy as they come
You understand like nobody else
I know you like I know myself

Gear Box

I think this was recorded on my ~2000 Gallagher A-70, but it might have been my 1999 Gallagher GA70 custom. It was 2012, I don’t remember. It was recorded in a corncrib south of Iowa City, as were a lot of records here at that time. The place sounded amazing.

Songwriter’s Workshop

I love CGDGBD because it’s a cross-tuning, where you have the 4 on the bottom, so it has a really interesting feel. There are keys, like C and D, which in standard tuning have 4-chords with bass notes lower than the tonic, but they are not open notes, like our big fat C in CGDGBD - except for the key of B, and who the hell wants to play in that shit-show of a key with its five stupid sharps. The C in CGDGBD is also crazy low, so it takes a special guitar to be able to handle that. A baritone guitar, usually with a much longer scale length, has a B on the bottom, as do some 7-string guitars, and that’s only half a step lower than this deep, chocolately C. (C is for chocolate, that’s good enough for me.) So yeah, this is deep. And it can be on the darker side, adding emotional resonance and mystery. In this song, I think it’s, frankly, gravitational. It’s like a counterweight to that higher-end lick, which allows the tune to frolic about without losing its center.

Sound Healer’s Planet

So what makes this song therapeutic? Well, it breathes and bounces. It drops to that lovely 4-chord from the sparkling 1-chord, which tames anxiety and deepens the breath. It is kind of like when you get home from something fancy and you take off the strict and confining undies (don’t talk to me about foundation garments, I don’t want to wear it if it sounds architectural) and slip into baggy pajamas - ahhhhhhhh.

It’s also a hopeful story with a happy ending, and that’s always a plus.