dhanners623 Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Here's a no-frills video of me doing my tune, "Williston," on the new J-35. The song is about the oil-boom town in North Dakota and was inspired, of all things, by an episode of "Hotel Impossible." Here are the lyrics.... WILLISTON © 2016 by David Hanners Load my life in a pickup truck Head north to make a buck Nebraska dirt no longer yields Made floorman on a workover rig Hitch is long, paycheck's big They're printing money in these Bakken fields Worms live on meth or caffeine I work with coiled springs Who only talk TV, sex and guns Weekends, they let go Blow their pay on booze and whores Half this town is on the run Motel bed, a warm six-pack You ask when I'm coming back Late-night call across the plains Love burned like a wellhead flare Line goes still but I know you're there Spaces between words remain Dakota winds, guywires whine A mournful rattle as old as time And cold as an old love's frown I'll give it one more month Load up my pickup truck And say to hell with this boomtown Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatbaroque Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Good song!Like your lyrics a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phelonious Ponk Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Great lyric. p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorrisrownSal Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Love the tone, and I love the song. One of the best things to be posted here, truly. Are you playing upside down? Cotten-style? That there is an awesome responsive J35 indeed. Here i embed it for you (I took out the "s" in https) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted September 18, 2016 Author Share Posted September 18, 2016 Love the tone, and I love the song. One of the best things to be posted here, truly. Are you playing upside down? Cotten-style? That there is an awesome responsive J35 indeed. Here i embed it for you (I took out the "s" in https) Thanks for the kind words, and for embedding he video. I figured I was doing something wrong.... And yeah, I play Cotten style. Or Albert King style. Or Shake Russell style. Taught myself to play on my brother's old Stella, which did not have a pickguard, so I had no idea I had this guitar upside down. By the time I had figured it out, I was too far along. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 That was real nice dhanner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MissouriPicker Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 David, that was real sweet. The guitar sounds very, very good. Real mellow to my ears with that fingerpicking........... I also really like the lyrics. You draw lots of images and leave them open to interpretation. I also like the rhyming pattern in each verse----starts with the first two lines rhyming and then goes to some once-in-a-while rhymng on lines 4 & 5 with definite rhymes on 3 & 6. Makes for a different rhythm and keeps things interesting. Good performance. Good writing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SC_Wannabe Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Very nice all the way around! I listened to your Decatur song - I'm just a few miles up the Sangamon from you in Monticello. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted September 18, 2016 Author Share Posted September 18, 2016 David, that was real sweet. The guitar sounds very, very good. Real mellow to my ears with that fingerpicking........... I also really like the lyrics. You draw lots of images and leave them open to interpretation. I also like the rhyming pattern in each verse----starts with the first two lines rhyming and then goes to some once-in-a-while rhymng on lines 4 & 5 with definite rhymes on 3 & 6. Makes for a different rhythm and keeps things interesting. Good performance. Good writing. Thanks. Actually, the song was a numbers exercise. Each verse and the bridge consists of two three-line sections, and each section has 18 words. So each verse (and the bridge) has 36 words. I've gotten conscious about word-count over the past couple of years (songwriters tend to be WAY too wordy...) and this was an exercise in keeping things as minimalistic as possible but still getting the story across. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted September 18, 2016 Author Share Posted September 18, 2016 Very nice all the way around! I listened to your Decatur song - I'm just a few miles up the Sangamon from you in Monticello. While my first job was being a paperboy for the Decatur Herald-Review, I never lived there. I'm originally from Casey, about an hour and a half southeast of Decatur. I should probably re-do "Decatur" on the J-35. It's a song made for a guitar like that.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly campbell Posted September 19, 2016 Share Posted September 19, 2016 I like your lyrics as well and love the sound of the 35..good job Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 333 Posted September 19, 2016 Share Posted September 19, 2016 Very powerful, David. Another strong example of your excellent songwriting and storytelling. I hope it ends up on a future album. How did the TV show inspire the song? It sounds so personal. Red 333 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Gibson Posted September 19, 2016 Share Posted September 19, 2016 I used to work in those same oilfields in the early 80s,that song is spot on the money. Good job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buc McMaster Posted September 19, 2016 Share Posted September 19, 2016 Very nice lyric, sir! Well done, you upside-down picker, you! Sold and shipped a helluva lot of oilfield equipment to Williston. When those guys break something they want it replaced right now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duluthdan Posted September 19, 2016 Share Posted September 19, 2016 Interesting to see the mathematic approach to the lyric and rhythm - I thought I was the only guy that paid attention to syllable count. Nice song about today's modern day 'Gold Rush'. Playing upside down and backwards - darn near impossible to dissect the chords. Nice song. [thumbup] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted September 19, 2016 Author Share Posted September 19, 2016 Interesting to see the mathematic approach to the lyric and rhythm - I thought I was the only guy that paid attention to syllable count. Nice song about today's modern day 'Gold Rush'. Playing upside down and backwards - darn near impossible to dissect the chords. Nice song. [thumbup] Thanks. I think I capoed at the first or second fret, and the chords are G, Bm and Am7, or maybe it is a C6/E. It's an Am chord with only the second and fourth strings fretted. Syllable counting is important. Stuff has to fit. But over the past couple of years, I've really taken a meat cleaver to a lot of my lyrics to get rid of extraneous words. It can be shocking to the system to reduce word count by 15 to 20 percent (or more) and realize the song is better for it. I've sat through too many open mics listening to folks play a nice 3-minute song; unfortunately, they stretched it out to 5 or 6 minutes. I vowed not to be that guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted September 19, 2016 Author Share Posted September 19, 2016 Very powerful, David. Another strong example of your excellent songwriting and storytelling. I hope it ends up on a future album. How did the TV show inspire the song? It sounds so personal. Red 333 Thanks, Red. I'd been wanting to write a song about the Bakken oil boom for some time and had bookmarked various stories I came across. But I was watching "Hotel Impossible" one night and Anthony, the host, was at a motel in Williston called the Missouri Flats. The place was nicknamed "Felony Flats" because of all the crime that went on there, namely drug sales and prostitution. They were renting rooms cheap to oilfield workers. (The episode was noteworthy in that Anthony saw so much potential in the motel, if it was run correctly, that he actually made an offer to the owner to have his own company take over management of the motel. The owner declined. The owner also didn't implement most of Anthony's recommendations. The reviewers on Yelp! trash the place.) I wanted to write a song about a middle-aged farmer from Nebraska who had to go to Williston to make some quick money; maybe he's trying to save the family farm. But he's working with lots of unstable young guys new to the industry -- "worms" is oilfield jargon for inexperienced workers -- and he finds a lot of drug use and shady characters. But he's missing home, and his wife or girlfriend really doesn't understand why he had to go. (My second ex-wife was from Nebraska, and there was something about the cadence of her voice; that's what prompted the line in the bridge about "spaces between words remain.") In the last verse, I tried to put the listener on a workover rig in the dead of a North Dakota winter. The wind makes the guywires zing. He decides he's had his fill, but needs to work out a few more weeks before he heads home, but is he holding out returning out of pride or out of the hope things will turn around? I don't know. So that's my thinking behind the song. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse_Dylan Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 What's this? First you say you played in a pub in St. Alban's, where my lady happens to live. Next you write a song about Williston, a town just west of me (and as you point out, it sure isn't the same place it used to be). The whole state has really changed, more so than with the boom/bust of the '80s. I've lived here 30 years (Minot, not Williston) and hope the bust sticks this time, but that's just me. :) Got nothing against the folks coming here because they have to, nothing even against the criminals. I do have something against the oil companies and the state politics that enable such a situation. Nice song that encapsulates it pretty darn well. How are you going to surprise me next?? I don't think there could possibly be any more strange coincidences, but I guess we'll see! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted September 20, 2016 Author Share Posted September 20, 2016 What's this? First you say you played in a pub in St. Alban's, where my lady happens to live. Next you write a song about Williston, a town just west of me (and as you point out, it sure isn't the same place it used to be). The whole state has really changed, more so than with the boom/bust of the '80s. I've lived here 30 years (Minot, not Williston) and hope the bust sticks this time, but that's just me. :) Got nothing against the folks coming here because they have to, nothing even against the criminals. I do have something against the oil companies and the state politics that enable such a situation. Nice song that encapsulates it pretty darn well. How are you going to surprise me next?? I don't think there could possibly be any more strange coincidences, but I guess we'll see! I'll try to come up with something.... I lived in Minnesota for 20 years, but in 2014, my wife decided she wanted to get back into international teaching, so we moved to Kuwait. Since I am here on a tourist visa, I have to leave the country every 90 days, so on one of my "visa runs," I went to Britain, where I have family. (My late mother was a war bride....) Most of the family lives in Hertfordshire, just north of London, hence the trip to the cathedral city of St. Albans. (They also have some fascinating Roman ruins there.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse_Dylan Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 I'll try to come up with something.... I lived in Minnesota for 20 years, but in 2014, my wife decided she wanted to get back into international teaching, so we moved to Kuwait. Since I am here on a tourist visa, I have to leave the country every 90 days, so on one of my "visa runs," I went to Britain, where I have family. (My late mother was a war bride....) Most of the family lives in Hertfordshire, just north of London, hence the trip to the cathedral city of St. Albans. (They also have some fascinating Roman ruins there.) Yes! I think that cathedral is my favorite building in the world. St Albans is an interesting place, a Roman town turned, medieval town turned sort of suburb (kind of) of London (although it arguably always had been) turned commuter town turned....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 333 Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Thanks for so thoughtfuly sharing your process and inspiration. Red 333 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trans Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Love the tone on that '35 Proud owner of NOS 2013 BLOOMED J-35 ma'self here fellas! Will be postin' lotsa dish! Peace!! Trans Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly campbell Posted December 17, 2016 Share Posted December 17, 2016 Good Job. Sounds nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MissouriPicker Posted December 17, 2016 Share Posted December 17, 2016 Just listened to it again, David. It really is a cool and folksy song. Tells a story that a lot of people can find themselves in. And that J35 has a great plunkety (is that a word?) sound. Pure Gibson tone. Love it, bud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trans Posted December 18, 2016 Share Posted December 18, 2016 Hey folks! Any of you swapped out the bridge pins from plastic to bone, tusQ, ebony? The saddles/nut seems to be fine by me but would swapping out the plastic bridge pins make any difference as in warming the sound up a bit? Would all say that the J35 is within a tad brighter than you would expect? Not that its a brighter than any big name brand out there. Am quite happy with the sound right now but in the works of experimenting a little bit here. Any experienced in swapping this for that? Peace! Trans Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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