I’ve been going through some old files and old notebooks on a quest for ideas that I might have forgotten. I’m not a big notebook keeper or journaler so I’m  often impressed when I do find something of note. I ran across this poem that I had written many years ago and then set to music. I performed it once at a gig where I had a backing band, but it doesn’t translate too well for guitar and solo voice. But that may be my perspective, perhaps I’ll try it next time and report back.

The poem is a love song, albeit a strange one. It speaks of courtship and how we’re all over the place until we find that one right person to make us whole. Again I use the idea of ‘emptiness’ to illustrate how we need to be open to possibility. Finally commitment and a sense of not knowing where one begins and the other ends: truly bonding, truly loving, truly trusting. Wedding song anyone?

I wrote this on my bass. Who writes songs on a bass? I used my fretless and put a ton of sproing on it. The upper strings are double stopped and then I play a slippery-slidery, watery melody that becomes a counter to the melody of the words. The texture is filled out with a synth drone and some wacky guitar noise. I tried a vocal technique known to many fans of the late-great Elliot Smith: doubling. I then panned each to the severe right and left getting a neat twin effect: not original, but it works.

Enjoy and leave a comment!

~dg~

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Pieces of Me

Pieces of me falling down
Catch them as you run around
Candle’s light dripping wax
Your fingers slide across my back

Love may be an empty poem
We write the words along the road
I’ll whisper rhymes into your ear – and
Pull you close so you can hear

You hold me up against the moon
You’ll be my bride I’ll be your groom
We’ll capture any star we need
And I’ll be you and you’ll be me

© 2003 by EmptyHead Musikwerks

Pieces of Me by Darryl Gregory is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.