I go back to the old place after many years away
Imagine all the time I spent here just 100 miles from Nashville and never made
the trip
Of course Nashville was a different place then,
Yeah the Grand Ole Opry was platitudinous and corny,
Country music was still hackneyed and banal, not young and hip
And anyhow, we played our own music in the shade of the old oak tree
When the afternoon became too hot to work but not too hot to play guitar
And old John Walters would come down the road and sing the old songs a
cappella
In his strange keening falsetto, drink too much of what it was he carried with
him in that mayonnaise jar
And tell us how they found his father in the bathtub on the day when he was
through with wondering when his lungs were going to take him
And then John would sing a song so pretty
We'd all grow quiet for a long time
While the sun sank towards the chicken barn
100 miles from music city
I go back and the old place is just 40 miles from Mammoth Cave
Just 40 miles away and all the time I lived so close I never even had the urge
to go
I guess it's hard to see yourself give up and play the tourist when you're
close to home
And anyhow the hills behind the house were full of caves you wouldn't even
know were there
Until it snowed and only then by where the snow was melted back from where the
rock was open wide enough to slide in on your belly until you found the place
It dropped down to a room so big we all could turn our flashlights off
And sit in darkness so complete that all your other senses were on fire and
you had to taste
The lips of someone next to you and breathe their Dr Bronner's soap and wood
smoke
And the only sound was the sssssss of your down parkas touching and you felt
so giddy
You drop your flashlight, listen while it rolls beyond a ledge then falls
forever till it hits the bottom
40 miles from Mammoth Cave
100 miles from Music City
I go back to the old place, no I never went to see the greyhounds racing even
though the track was only fifteen miles from where I woke up all those days
And went to sleep as many nights without the wish to see those greyhounds race
around the track
Like an unhappy metaphor for life, if I had ever lived that way
And anyhow, I had a yellow dog and he was smart and irreproachable
In all that time I never put him on a leash or even made him wear a collar
And he only ran off twice, first time he was gone two days and nights
And I have never felt so lonely as when I was walking through that hayfield
and hollering
And hollering and bleeding from the barbed wire fence,
But there he was two mornings later, peppered full of buckshot, and the second
time he ran away, well that was it
He never did come back so I can't kneel beside his grave
Fifteen miles from Coleman Racetrack 40 miles from Mammoth Cave
100 miles from Music City
I asked Annie Gallup a songwriting question over e-mail. Here's her response:
"Is it an art or a craft? Oh!! I have this fine arts/metalsmithing background
and that was the compelling question of the era when I was involved in that
world, and I was determined to create art in a crafts medium and sidestep or
confound the whole issue. Because isn't the whole world made of blurry lines
and the attempt to organize it categorically just about comfort levels or the
kind of brain that needs to categorize to control (call it by name and it's
yours. yellow shafted flicker. iambic pentameter. art.) what it is and not
about how the world morphs through shades of everything? So that everything
has it's own sense and there are no rules and you can't actually get through
life without thinking after all by playing learnable rules? And the point of
creating anything worth creating in any medium is that you have to make
choices. And of course you are the sum of all you have ever known or heard or
experienced and that is why civilizations build on what preceded them and why
as contemporaries we have roots in common..... is it an art or a craft?"
100 Miles From Music City is a masterful example of both, of course - look how
each verse moves from the commercial/tourist version of experience to the
personal/real one; and how that transitional moment is marked each time by the
words, "and anyhow." The song deals with the reference points we create in
order to put our lives in a context. She suggests the infinite in the line
"You drop your flashlight, listen while it rolls beyond a ledge then falls
forever till it hits the bottomÖ" but really the song doesn't touch infinity
until the ending - we're faced with an experience which has no marking, a
question without an answer. And notice how Gallup captures not only the dog's
personality but the essence of its relationship with the narrator, in deft
strokes: "he was smart and irreproachable." The real question about Annie's
work isn't whether it's an art or a craft, but whether it belongs first to
poetry or philosophy. Ö Catch Annie live when you get a chance, her concerts
are dazzling. 100 Miles From Music City is on "Courage My Love" on 1800 Prime
CD, available by mail from them. -Andrew Calhoun Awaterbug@aol.com