Friends,
Hope this finds you all relatively well.
Today I am sharing a video of my song How Will We Sleep from the most recent Pernice Brothers LP Who Will You Believe. This post is free to all of my subscribers. For my paying subscribers: I will be posting another Substack early next week. I appreciate the subscriptions, and I don’t want anyone feeling short-changed.
If you’re new here and would like to receive all posts, including those with video and alternate recordings of my songs, you might consider converting your free subscription to paid status. The rate is $5.00 a month. For that you get the whole ball of wax, including the archive. Okay, my pitch ends there.
Like I say in the video, I tried to get my hands in the shot in case any of you want to try and learn the tune. Truth be told, the chords are pretty simple, aka campfire chords. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of rhythm guitar (like me) will be able to play it pretty easily. I don’t know why I am thinking about this right now, but when my sister Deborah (three years older than me) was in maybe sixth grade, she took up playing the flute. My family of six kids and two parents was probably near the lower end of middle class. When my folks bought my sister a flute of her own, it was a real expense. That flute was to be treated like a Faberge egg. I’m sure my sister still has it. Anyway, when Saturday Night Fever was released, and the soundtrack shot to the top of the charts, Deborah received a book of the sheet music to Saturday Night Fever. I have a vivid memory of her playing the almost-recognizable lead vocal melody to How Deep Is Your Love on flute. If a sixth-grader can do that, you semi-pro guitarists can figure out my meat and potatoes progression.
I wrote How Will We Sleep pretty quickly—words and music—sitting in the same chair my behind is on in the video. I’m a creature of habit. I tend to write in the same chair, looking in the same direction, drinking the same organic dark roast coffee from Ideal Coffee in Toronto. Back in the old, old days, a bit of nicotine in the mix would get my brain cooking in a way I found enjoyable and effective. Thankfully, those were different times.
For those of you who might not have a lot of experience with my 17 or 18 albums, How Will We Sleep is a bit of a different song for me. It’s almost a traditional folk song, both in instrumentation and message. The studio version (which can be streamed wherever music is streamed) is a solo vocal, a single nylon string guitar and the same guitar playing a two-track lead break. There’s no jangling electric guitar. No orchestration. Nothing. Very often for me, the preferred arrangement of a song suggests itself while I’m writing. In the most thrilling circumstances I can hear in my head what it’s going to sound like on tape. That’s not always the case. But it was with this song. And the arrangement was to be spare.
I won’t go into the lyrics because I think their meaning is pretty obvious. The song is among my simpler ones. It’s also one of my favorites. And by that I mean it felt absolutely correct to me from idea to mix. That’s a rare treat.
Okay, I’ll stop here.
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Thanks a lot for listening and reading. I’ll be back early next week with another post. Will mine some early Scud Mountain Boys stuff and see what I find.
Take care of yourselves and those around you.
JP
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