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Track 11 - "WHY ME?"
I wrote this song a couple of weeks before we started tracking this cd. I had the guitar riff running through my head and was playing it on the resonator every time I picked it up. I kept looking for other chords to 'take it somewhere else' but it never wanted to go anywhere else. C and F ... and that's it folks. Tyler isn't on it because I didn't know it was going to be on the cd so I played the cajon, apologies to anyone who actually plays drums...
The lyric came pouring out one morning. It basically describes that feeling that most of us have sometimes that we have successfully pulled the wool over everyone's eyes for the last few decades and any moment someone is going to figure out that we don't know what we're doing, just faking it really...
More properly I guess it's about feeling lucky, lucky to have met Jan who I love so much, lucky to be alive and still playing, and lucky to have made music with great artists like David Wilcox, Murray McLauchlan, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Gordie and Al in Big Sugar, Chris de Burgh, Ken and Roberta of Wild Strawberries, Mojah, Terry, Jody and the rest of Compass, D.W. James, Willie P. Bennett, and musicians like Danny Greenspoon, Bohdan Hluszko, Amos Garrett, Stephen Miller, Vezi Tayyeb, Whitey Glan, Blake Manning, Mean Steve Piano, Darren Johnson, Tim Williams and Steve, Dutch and Ross here in Calgary.
For those who don't recognize all the names of the musicians I mention who we've lost --
Ron Pearson was a great singer and musician who had begun to find a unique voice as a songwriter. I think he owned every album Merle Haggard had ever made and did a pretty mean 'Merle' in his gorgeous baritone. I played with Ron and Russ Prowse (who sings on a couple of the songs on this cd) in the mid-70's and although neither of them shared my ambition I regard my time with them as pivotal to what made me the musican I became. Cancer claimed Ron in 1989. His son Luke plays in Ottawa these days in a band called Scarlett Fever.
Billy Cowsill was a member of the family band who had some international hits in the late 60's and early 70's. He came to Canada late in the 70's and made his home in Vancouver and later in Calgary which is where I played with him though I had met and played with him a couple of times on the CBC radio show I did called 'Swinging on a Star' in the early 90's. Blessed with a beautiful voice and faultless musical instincts he lived hard and fast, making some remarkable music along the way. In one of life's inexplicable ironies his health failed when he cleaned himself out and he succumbed to a number of debilitating conditions in 2006.
Richard Bell was a consummate musician and one of the nicest men you'd ever want to meet. And his career spanned the history of rock and roll. I personally saw him play with everyone from Janis Joplin in the Full Tilt Boogie Band to The Band to Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. He is featured on screen reminiscing a number of times about the legendary "Festival Express" in the movie of the same name. I played with him with David Wilcox but had run into him lots of times over the span of my career, (not to mention, as I indicated, having seen him play with Janis Joplin at the Festival Express in Toronto.) Cancer claimed him in 2007.
Willie P. Bennett was one of Canada's best-loved songwriters but he spent most of the last decade of his career playing mandolin and harmonica with Fred Eaglesmith. I first saw Willie at the Mariposa Festival on Toronto Island in 1975 and was immediately a fan. I later played with him a number of times and played bass on his album "The Lucky Ones". I remember the two of us lost in the suburbs of Winnipeg one summer with Willie at the wheel of a borrowed Firebird looking for a boots factory and some hot, hazy duo dates in Southern Ontario in August of 1989. After one gig on that tour Willie and I each found ourselves with two dozen cobs of fresh sweet corn, a bonus from a concert, riding in the back with the gear. Willie died early in 2008 of heart failure, two months older than me. But yes Willie, we were 'the lucky ones, to have these dreams to dream at all.'
The blue-eyed woman of the last verse is of course my darling Jan Sullivan who is my constant delight and the most wonderful woman I have ever met. I don't know what she sees in me but I have to encourage her delusion and applaud her choice ...
PERSONNEL
Upright bass -- KJ
Martin acoustic guitar -- KJ
High string acoustic guitar -- KJ
Johnson resonator guitar -- KJ
Pedal steel -- Tim (Dutch) Leacock
Cajon -- KJ
Lead and harmony voices -- KJ
"WHY ME?" lyrics
When I was 25 I was playing in bands
I saw a man play an old guitar and there was magic in his hands
The band was hot, the people cheered, he had just hit his stride
Suddenly to my surprise I was playing at his side.
CHORUS
Why me?
Why me with all my flaws?
Why me out of all the others?
Why me?
Now we miss our fallen comrades constantly;
Ron Pearson, Billy Cowsill, Richard Bell and Willie P.
Their voices mute, their fingers stilled, and I'm still standing here
Spared for now to drink their health, celebrate and persevere
CHORUS
Why me?
Why me with all my flaws?
Why me out of all the others?
Why me?
All those roads have brought me here to you
In awe before your beauty, your true heart, your eyes so blue
The men who call, the heads that turn, you have your pick of those
But looking clearly at me ... it's me you chose.
CHORUS
Why me?
Why me with all my flaws?
Why me out of all the others?
Why me?
music and lyrics by Kit Johnson SOCAN