This is a simple little song – one of many I wrote for a doomed relationship I tried to have in the late naughts.
Some of the lyrics and imagery are direct lifts from the old folk song "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes". The third verse is based on the idea of a dream in which all of one's past lovers come back to show you how what goes around comes around and your deserve every ounce of misery and failure that you're experiencing.
At its inception, this song had a completely different chorus (which really feels more like "B part" than a chorus) which I can't remember now. I obviously didn't like it very much because I didn't play this song very often until I wrote the current B part sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.
Most of the songs I've posted in this project so far have been fairly fun and positive. In eight songs I've only done ONE break-up song. Those of you who know my music will know that this is not really representative.
I guess I've been trying to cheer myself up and it seems to have worked. Which means that I think I can risk a downer today, especially since it is so beautifully sunny:
This is a very simple little song that I began in August 2004 and finished in September/October of the same year. Going through my 2004 journals, I'm a bit shocked by how many great songs I wrote that year, many of them never recorded. This is not a song I play often in public performance. I've tried it, but it doesn't go over that well, frankly. It's a bit slow and depressing.
It is, however, heartfelt and very meaningful to me. Putting it up on
YouTube is kind of perfect, actually, because if you get bored you can
just go do something else. In a live situation, that would hurt my
feelings – but in the virtual world, I'll never know unless you tell me
(and please don't).
This is another song with a reference to Paul Simon, though I wouldn't have thought he was that big an influence in my musical life. The line "I've crapped out" in this song is defintely a reference to the line "4 in the morning, crapped-out, yawning, longing my life away / I never worry, why should I? / It's all gonna fade" in the bridge of the title track of Paul Simon's album, Still Crazy After All These Years, which was one of my favourite records in my stepdad's collection when I was a kid.
*As usual, view the song in YouTube to see the typed final lyrics.
I wrote this song for the Petite Riviere Community Park's opening ceremony held in October 2014. The park is a beautiful reclamation of former industrial land near the mouth of the river in Petite Riviere, Nova Scotia. The park has been gorgeously landscaped with indigenous plants by Rose-Marie Lohnes and her team at Helping Nature Heal.
I was invited to sing at the opening ceremony by my friend Leif Helmer, who was instrumental in the creation of the park and is also the founder of Little River Folk (where I've helped out and served on the board) and other community endeavours too numerous to mention here.
When Leif invited me, I figured I would sing River Road, a song about the neighbouring LaHave River which I know many people in our community appreciate. But, as I got closer to the ceremony, I decided that I really wanted to write a song specifically about the Petite River, if I could.
Just a couple of days before the ceremony, I put a call out on Facebook for people to share their stories about the river. Many of my friends and neighbours contributed their stories, thoughts and feelings, and I scrambled to write this song.
The Process
Here's the first draft:
You can see how I tried to squeeze in as many stories as I could: about the group of seven painting the Petite, about a child falling through the ice. There were many other things I would have liked to have included - about the artists, especially the painters and rug hookers who thrive on the banks of the Petite, about some of the stories of daredevil stunts that have involved the river and its many bridges.
But in the end, I knew that I couldn't fit everything into the song or it would be a 9-minute-long epic! It is only a little river, after all.
Here's the final version:
Because I wrote the song at the last minute, I didn't actually know it very well when I performed it at the ceremony in October. There were a few flubs for sure, but I made some people laugh and some cry. Any performance that does that is a success in my eyes.
Still, it's nice to present a more polished version now.
The Details (and the In-Joke)
This song contains several "insider" references on its lazy inner-tube ride down the Petite.
The reference to "whitefish" in the fourth verse is a tip of the hat to the Petite for being one of only two rivers that forms habitat for the endangered Atlantic Whitefish.
The otter in that same verse was desired for its rhyme with "water" obviously, but I did get a river resident to confirm that river otters have been spotted on the banks of the Petite.
The mention of "Sperry's" in verse six refers to Sperry's beach, a small beach on an outcrop of sand that faces the Petite River on one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other. It sits across from one end of Risser's Beach and is one of five amazing beaches within a ten-minute drive of the community of Petite Riviere. Sperry's is considered the "local" beach. It is accessed by an unmarked road and tourists are generally not told how to get in.
With thanks to Jennifer, Stephen, Bernadette, Susan, Rose-Marie, Dana,
Tara, Leif, Anne, Margaret, Scotty, Stacey, Angela, Stephanie, Sharon
and Annie for their contributions to the writing of the song.
I wrote this song during the first Creative Marathon I ever did, which was back in the summer of 2006. I can't remember the exact date of that CM, but I think it's safe to assume that it was shortly after I attended the Hillside Festival in Guelph, which is always the last weekend in July. This song is based on my experience of seeing Luke Doucet perform Bruce Springteen's I'm On Fire at Hillside that year. I hadn't heard that song in years, and in that way that certain songs have to lock into our memories, it took me right back to high school.
My mother taught at the same high school I attended for Grade 11 and 12 (living in a rural area, there was only one consolidated high school, so there wasn't any way out of that happening). I decided to handle this situation by being a really good student, studying hard and not making any waves. I didn't drink, do drugs, skip school or date. I just put my head down and got through it.
I don't regret it; I got an awesome scholarship to U. of T. out of those diligent years and came through university debt-free. But, it meant that I didn't work through any wild rebelliousness when I was in my teens. And that has come back to haunt me once or twice.
I've never recorded this song because I couldn't get the performance right for my record in 2008 and there's also the issue of arranging the rights for the cover of I'm On Fire that this song segues into. Hopefully, I won't get sued for posting it on YouTube.
The first song in this project was one of my newest; this second song is over 20 years old.
I wrote it in October 1994 in the wake of a bad break-up. I was 23 years old. I was just in the process of defining my identity and that is essentially what this song is about.
The first verse of this song is inspired by Jacques Brel's song Ne Me Quitte Pas, which ends with the lyrics: "Laisse moi devenir / l'ombre de ton ombre / l'ombre de ta main / l'ombre de ton chien" – which translates in English to: "Let me become / the shadow of your shadow / the shadow of your hand / the shadow of your dog".
The relationship that ended in 1994 had consisted of a great deal of Jacques Brel and also many shadows.
Alex Hickey was born with a serious case of sass-mouth, and it appears to be incurable. She is a Nova Scotian songwriter who writes folk & country songs about the economy, the environment, love, poisonings, bicycles and much, much more. Armed only with her soaring voice & acoustic guitar, this gal can crack you up with one song and break you down into tears with the next.
