Dreamers Rise
An Open Notebook
And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight
Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate.
 Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) | |||||
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The following assortment of notes,
musings, proposals for future consideration, lists, and quotations is by
design doubly open: exposed to the reader, but also subject to revision,
expansion, excision in a way that a traditional written journal (or even
a blog) is not.
The Mortician's Daughter I got a chance to see Freedy Johnston live the other night. I had seen him once earlier, playing with his longtime lead guitarist Cameron Greider about six or seven years ago; this time he was on his own in a small club. The show was a little ragged at times. He began it distracted by his dog, who was just outside the door, started playing with the capo on the wrong fret once or twice and had to start a song over, forgot the lyrics to “Dolores,” and at one point stopped the show for about ten minutes while he replaced a nine volt in his electronic tuner. But he was relaxed and in good spirits and eventually hit his stride. On his records you don't at first notice how effective a guitarist Freedy is, although it's there if you listen carefully. As he's made clear in interviews, he doesn't pretend to be a accomplished lead player, but his playing is original and assured; he makes the most of a few well-chosen, deceptively simple-sounding licks and strums neatly tailored to his own compositions. I've always liked this song from its original appearance on Can You Fly in 1992. He played it live this time, with a somewhat different, freer arrangement starting at the beginning of the second verse. After the show I bought a copy of Freedy's self-issued CD Live at 33 1/3 from his wife. (This seems to be available only at gigs.) The version there is very similar to what he played the other night, and I think, even better than the one originally recorded. If you don't realize that the first two lines are supposed to be funny you're not getting this song, but for all that it's a sweet, sad, and I think very canny and beautiful piece. A little mysterious too: has the girl died? If so, it neatly folds together the song's little ironies of sex and death. I used to love the mortician's daughter November 25, 2005
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