“Mother’s Baby Grand”

[dhanners623]

Had COVID over the past week so here’s all I have to show for it. “Mother’s Baby Grand” is a true story, but all the events in it (except for the last verse) happened before I was born. I’ll have to admit that Guy Clark’s “The Randall Knife” was an inspiration.

I generally have one rule when it comes to songwriting: My life is off-limits. I’ve had an interesting-enough life, but I just don’t like to write about it when I could delve into the lives of others. But as I was riding home on the bus after grocery shopping last week, I remembered the story about the piano and I thought, “Hey, that isn’t a bad idea for a song.” So I wrote and rewrote and here we are. I should note that “Houge Town” is pronounced “Hogtown.” It is a few miles south of Casey, and dad managed a small tank farm for the Pure Oil Co. There was a house on-site so that’s where they moved. They were living there when I was born. But it was in a flood plain of the Embarrass (pronounced “AM-braw”) River and so it would flood. One of my earliest memories is of people coming to get us in a boat and then we spent a couple of weeks in town at grandma’s house.

And if you ever go to Houge Town (it is only a house and a bunch of rusting farm junk) drive a couple miles east to the Moonshine Store and you’ll have one of the best hamburgers in the Midwest. It’s been written up quite often, and it is a place in the middle of nowhere.

Mother’s Baby Grand

©️2024 by David Hanners

 

In the house I grew up in we had an old bookcase

Chipped and scratched from several moves but it had pride of place

Borne of equal parts of hubris and forgiveness, I suppose

Its shelves bore the weight of memories that time itself erodes

 

Mother had a baby grand, dad bought it after the war

Promised her a piano and found one he could afford

Mom was his British war bride, they married and had a boy

The world safe from Nazi ruin, they settled in Casey, Illinois

 

Mom loved to play her show tunes and her John Wesley hymns

They reminded her of England, of tea and biscuit tins

But when dad got work near Houge Town they had to move down there

He flat refused to haul a quarter-ton down those shaky switchback stairs

 

Now, dad worked with his hands, he was headstrong and whip-smart

Figured he could move that baby grand by taking it apart

But they are built by craftsmen, take years to hone their trade

Can’t be torn down and rebuilt like some Chevrolet V-8

 

The parts sat in silence as if to mock dad to his face

So he used the mahogany to build mom a bookcase

I see it in old photographs: shelves lined with mom’s song books

Dad had bought her an upright so he was off the hook

 

Father sold the house and furniture after mother died

Don’t know where that bookcase landed; some things you just let slide

My parents were not wealthy, they bequeathed me no estate

But all I would have wanted was mother’s baby grand bookcase

[Lars68]

Thumbs up, David. Very good song and moving performance.

I often find that a song in the first person tends to be received by listeners as autobiographical, which of course doesn't have to be the case. So it helps to add an emotional authenticity to a song, especially in a one voice, one guitar, performance, making the words even more believable. I think it was Jason Isbell who said something like “nobody ever thinks Schwarzenegger is the Terminator, but everyone confuses me for the character in my songs.” 

Oh, and I think your songs are indeed autobiographical, you just have to listen to a few of them, and read a little between the lines, and the listener will get a piece of your story too along the way.

Lars

 

Edited July 8 by Lars68

[dhanners623]

7 hours ago, Lars68 said:

Thumbs up, David. Very good song and moving performance.

I often find that a song in the first person tends to be received by listeners as autobiographical, which of course doesn't have to be the case. So it helps to add an emotional authenticity to a song, especially in a one voice, one guitar, performance, making the words even more believable. I think it was Jason Isbell who said something like “nobody ever thinks Schwarzenegger is the Terminator, but everyone confuses me for the character in my songs.” 

Oh, and I think your songs are indeed autobiographical, you just have to listen to a few of them, and read a little between the lines, and the listener will get a piece of your story too along the way.

Lars

 

Thanks. There is probably some smidgen of autobiography in my songs; they are, after all, the World According to Me. But my protagonists tend to be much darker and more pessimistic than I am. 

I will admit I am somewhat jaded because I have been to way too many open mics where the performer sings to us about his or her latest lost love and how much he/she hurts. Unless you find some new and different way to express that feeling, those songs are hard to pull off. And if you’re going to be a “confessional” songwriter, then the confession better be pretty raw and/or profound. Check out Loudon Wainwright III’s “Hitting You.”

[MissouriPicker]

Excellent, Dave!  I love it when there’s a life story inside a song.  I can feel a human connection to your parents.….And when you write about life experiences, it’s  going to be autobiographical.  That adds interest for me.  Keep it going, buddy!  You write from the place I do.  Lots of nostalgia in what’s to be said.

[dhanners623]

25 minutes ago, MissouriPicker said:

Excellent, Dave!  I love it when there’s a life story inside a song.  I can feel a human connection to your parents.….And when you write about life experiences, it’s  going to be autobiographical.  That adds interest for me.  Keep it going, buddy!  You write from the place I do.  Lots of nostalgia in what’s to be said.

Thanks! I’ll probably have to wait for more memories to bubble up to the surface….

[Red 333]

Sweet story and nice song. Again.

Red 333