The Songs - Angel of Truth
28/04/09
Angel of Truth began a long time ago (mid-1970’s?) as a chord riff on my old acoustic. For you musicians, It was 1/4 back and forth in E, then 5/1, with muting and slides up the neck between riffs. At that time I wanted to write a Ledbelly type acoustic blues, but (as usual) it went where it wanted to. For years I had jut the verse chords and melody. In the 1980’s some time or other I put a chorus/bridge to it. It wasn’t very good, but the words to the chorus/bridge helped flesh out the theme. As some of my older friends might remember, they were:
Spell binder, moonshiner
Give it up now
Give it up now
The chords were still major, and still a spin on 1/4/5
The theme was basically - You lie, you die.
I put the song aside (wherever that is!) except to play it once in awhile to practice a certain kind of strumming pattern. My friend Brian Hughes used to like it, and he’s a roots blues fan, so I kept it on the back-burner. Fast forward to late 2007 and I started jamming with some old high school buddies. Doug Anderson and I were working up some of our originals. (Aside to Doug: We have got to get in the studio!) We didn’t use Angel, but it was one of the ones that went over good with him and our sometime bass player, Dave Milne. In another setting I was jamming with another friend, Tony Buchner. Out of all the originals I showed him, he liked Angel the most.
Soon thereafter, I negotiated an arrangement with my son Paul for him to produce a CD of my originals. We chose six, not originally including Angel of Truth. Soon, as I wrote earlier, the novel became intertwined with the songs. We re-thought the CD selections. Amazingly, five of them fit like a glove, but one was way out. What to do? Immediately it came to us that Angel of Truth would fit in very well with certain aspects of the book’s plot and theme - so close it seemed to have been tailor made for the job. But nobody was satisfied with the bridge. I read and listened until it came to me that we had to go minor/major in the bridge. I brought back a melody over F#minor, C#minor, G#major, C#major. As musicians will note, that C#major shouldn’t work. Except that it does when it leads to A7, G#7, C#major. Try it, you’ll like it!
Anyway, Paul’s brilliant production leadership took the joint band arrangement (John Hodgert; vocal and rhythm guitar; Paul Hodgert: bass and ‘angel’ choir; Luke Bergen, drums and ‘devil’ choir; Tony Buchner; ‘Can I be the devil?’ lead guitar, and ‘devil’ chorus) to a HNL (hole nutha lebel) The song had gone where it wanted, into hard rock but still dragging its roots with it. Oh great! Now we’re supposed to do all the songs real good! We’ll try.
Spell binder, moonshiner
Give it up now
Give it up now
The chords were still major, and still a spin on 1/4/5
The theme was basically - You lie, you die.
I put the song aside (wherever that is!) except to play it once in awhile to practice a certain kind of strumming pattern. My friend Brian Hughes used to like it, and he’s a roots blues fan, so I kept it on the back-burner. Fast forward to late 2007 and I started jamming with some old high school buddies. Doug Anderson and I were working up some of our originals. (Aside to Doug: We have got to get in the studio!) We didn’t use Angel, but it was one of the ones that went over good with him and our sometime bass player, Dave Milne. In another setting I was jamming with another friend, Tony Buchner. Out of all the originals I showed him, he liked Angel the most.
Soon thereafter, I negotiated an arrangement with my son Paul for him to produce a CD of my originals. We chose six, not originally including Angel of Truth. Soon, as I wrote earlier, the novel became intertwined with the songs. We re-thought the CD selections. Amazingly, five of them fit like a glove, but one was way out. What to do? Immediately it came to us that Angel of Truth would fit in very well with certain aspects of the book’s plot and theme - so close it seemed to have been tailor made for the job. But nobody was satisfied with the bridge. I read and listened until it came to me that we had to go minor/major in the bridge. I brought back a melody over F#minor, C#minor, G#major, C#major. As musicians will note, that C#major shouldn’t work. Except that it does when it leads to A7, G#7, C#major. Try it, you’ll like it!
Anyway, Paul’s brilliant production leadership took the joint band arrangement (John Hodgert; vocal and rhythm guitar; Paul Hodgert: bass and ‘angel’ choir; Luke Bergen, drums and ‘devil’ choir; Tony Buchner; ‘Can I be the devil?’ lead guitar, and ‘devil’ chorus) to a HNL (hole nutha lebel) The song had gone where it wanted, into hard rock but still dragging its roots with it. Oh great! Now we’re supposed to do all the songs real good! We’ll try.
0 Comments