Perhaps Not So Inexplicable

I’ve written before about songs I find inexplicably perfect. Crooked Still’s “Orphan Girl” is another one of them.

Perhaps some of it can be explained by the band’s curious combination of style and instrumentation. Depending on who you ask, Crooked Still is a progressive bluegrass band, a folk ensemble, or a string band. This particular track’s lyrics and prominent banjo certainly would incline one towards that type of assessment, and lead singer Aoife O’Donovan’s vocal style always puts me in mind of Alison Krauss. Not a lot of bluegrass bands have a cellist, however, and at the time Hop High — the album “Orphan Girl” is from — was recorded, the group didn’t have a fiddler. So there’s certainly a sense of the exotic about it.

The song itself is not particularly remarkable. Its lyrics are simple and fairly repetitive. The chord progression is very close — if not identical — to Pacabel’s Canon, which means I occasionally try to sing the lyrics to Green Day’s “Basket Case” over it. Then again, I’m a blues fan, which means that I don’t demand a huge amount of structural variety from my listening.

And I think that’s where the real answer lies. I’ve talked before how I love to see performers take something and make it their own, and my collection of cover songs bears that out. One of the things about a simple musical and lyrical structure is that it leaves so much room for personal expression — and in fact that’s often all you have to work with. You can’t hide behind cleverness or artifice. I can’t help but be drawn to that kind of purity of expression.

Which applies equal well to the Leo Kottke cover of “Corrina, Corrina” that just started playing here.

I Can't Think of Christmas Without These

I.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o’er the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight!
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of Might,
Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times didst give the law
In cloud, and majesty, and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

II.

The boar’s head in hand bear I,
Bedeck’d with bays and rosemary.
I pray you, my masters, be merry
Quot estis in convivio.
Caput apri defero
Reddens laudes Domino

The boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all this land,
Which thus bedeck’d with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico.
Caput apri defero
Reddens laudes Domino

Our steward hath provided this
In honour of the King of Bliss;
Which, on this day to be served is
In Reginensi atrio.
Caput apri defero
Reddens laudes Domino

III.

Lo, how a rose e’er blooming,
From tender stem hath sprung.
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung;
It came, a flow’ret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

Isaiah ‘twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind,
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind;
To show God’s love aright,
She bore to men a Savior,
When halfspent was the night.

O Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispel with glorious splendour
The darkness everywhere;
True man, yet very God,
From Sin and death now save us,
And share our every load.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Hallelujah (And More)

This weekend we got the tree. Sunday was the holiday beer tasting at the Merc. But tonight is my favorite Christmastime tradition: the “Messiah” Sing-along.

I have always loved to sing, and I did a ton of it growing up. Since college, though, I haven’t done much of it. I certainly haven’t done enough of it for my taste. Every so often I think about finding a group to be be part of, or learning piano or guitar so I could strike out on my own. I know that would take rearranging my priorities, and I haven’t quite made the commitment to do that yet.

So, one Tuesday evening every December, I pick up my score, head over to First Presbyterian, and hope that this is the year we finally pull off “Worthy Is The Lamb.”

Don't Call It a Comeback, I've Been Here for Years

Remember how my friends Diana and Adam got a married a few weeks ago? They had karaoke at their reception (making it the second wedding I’ve been to that has), which made me ask them, “How come we’ve never done karaoke together?” The response was “We didn’t know you did it.” And at least for the last little while that’s been true.

I’ve always been a singer. I did a ton of school choir growing up, I was in a guys’ quartet in high school, and I sang in an a cappella group in college. But my first real experience with karaoke was almost five years, when I started doing improv. There were several people in the group who had connections to the Ventura karaoke scene, so it was common for us to head over after Monday workshops to a nearby bar that had karaoke. I had a lot of fun with it, but as the group’s membership changed, we lost some of that connection, and I moved up to Thursday workshops, I stopped doing it entirely.

Until this week, of course. Last Thursday while I was out for drinks with the SBTweetup group, Adam texted me about doing karaoke this week. I said yes, and my friend Erica — who happened to be with me when I got the text — decided to come along. This Tuesday I made my triumphant return with Lynryd Skynyrd’s “Call Me The Breeze”, The Talking Heads’ “And She Was”, and Bobby Darin’s, “Mack The Knife.”

I’m already thinking about what to do next week.

Update

Fitness: Ran 2 miles
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 330 words, 271 seven-day average, 285 average, 54239 total, 761 to go for the week

Classical, Bluegrass, and Hymns

As I was driving to work the other morning, I realized I’d forgotten to update my iPhone with podcasts, so I turned on the radio. I decided I didn’t want talking heads, so after flipping through several stations that were on “morning commute” breaks from music, I ended up on KDB, a local classical station, and caught the beginning of Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.” I thought to myself, “That sounds familiar.”

When I started singing along, I realized why. The “theme by Haydn” is the Saint Anthony Chorale, which is the tune for Hymn #67 in the United Methodist Hymnal, “We, Thy People, Praise Thee.”

This is not the first time something like this has happened; there are fair number of hymns that I grew up with that are based on Baroque (usually Bach) or Classical tunes. I hadn’t realized that until I started digging into music history in the last several years. Learning more about musicology has not only given me a sense for what happened when, it’s made me realize how deeply ingrained certain harmony structures are in my musical sense. I think one of the reasons I’m enjoying getting into bluegrass right now is because it draws on some of those same sensibilities. Certain kinds of music just resonate with me, and I’m slowly getting a better and better understanding of why.

Update

Fitness: Ran 6 miles
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 338 words, 366 seven-day average, 279 average, 47757 total, 243 to go for the week; 11-day streak