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“Cactus” before and after

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After posting that new demo of Cactus yesterday, I thought it might be interesting to show Daddy’s original words and how they turned out as lyrics. You know, something edumacational.

Also, it gives an idea of how long it can take to put a song out there – at least for me. I just looked up the original email and it was sent February 2016! Here are the words Thomas H. Williams wrote back then (un-edited – Daddy has his own artistic license with spelling and grammar):

“if I wasn’t me I’d be a cactus,…..maybe a tall saguro, real high…..waving my long arms at the sun, or the moon beneath the high desert sky…..maybe I’d be a silver cholla….succulent by a streambed that’s mostly dry…….maybe I’d stand like an organ pipe cactus, playin’ music. and my tune would sound like the buzz of bees on the prickly pear blossom, or the slow flappin’ sound of bats as they gather nectar under the cloak of dark by night. I’d be able to save my memories, like the barrel cactus saves water, not wasting one sweet drop…….that pickly tribe, why they are beautiful…..people lookin’ long see that they mean no harm, being safe behind their thorns…..if I was a scarlet hedgehog I’d show my colors, just for you…..if I wasn’t me I’d be a cactus….and I’d soak up all the love around me like cholla sips the dew.”

Damn.

I dibbled and dabbled with the idea of turning it into a song for almost a year. It was one of those ticklers – like in the movie ‘Babe’ – the idea of it just wouldn’t go away. I had most of the song in place by summer, and finally finished up the melody and new lyrics while I was on a family visit to Jacksonville in January 2017. And there are so many wonderful parts of the original that didn’t make it into the song – but each song is its own puzzle and the parts fit the way they fit. So it becomes something somewhat new.

Cactus by Williams and Williams

 

if I wasn’t me I’d be a cactus

I’d soak up all your lovin’ like the cholla sips the dew.

I’d use my thorns to keep our hearts safe

And I’d show all my colors, just for you

 

I could be a saguaro, waving so high

waving to the moon in the black velvet sky

Crowned by the flapping sound of bats flying by

Gathering their nectar by the dark of the night

 

If I was an organ pipe, playing you my tune

Sounding just like buzzing bees on wildflower blooms

Every kiss you’d shower would become my favorite song

And the hummingbirds would sing along

 

Your beauty is the flower of a wild prickly pear

With so many brilliant petals in colors so rare

Sweet magenta kisses are the fruits that you bring

Leaving me with just enough breath to sing

 

 

It wasn’t finished yet, though. I first wrote it as a bright uptempo ditty but the lyrics are pretty dense with words and syllables so I would trip over them. It wasn’t til my last trip to J’ville in August, playing it for Daddy, that he suggested I slow it down, let it breathe. I was a little resistant at first but it did feel more ‘right’. I also love fingerpicking a tune slowly like that. After coming home, I also dropped the key slightly. NOW it felt like something.

Then of course Daddy wanted a video of me playing it, so at some point during every phone call home since, while chatting with Mami, i’d hear his voice bellowing in the background ‘Where’s that video of Cactus?” Aaand here we are!

“Cactus” Demo

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Every now and then, I do a quick video demo of a new song – part of it is to just put it out there, see how folks react, observe any resonance. I don’t do this for every new song, just some of the ones that get me more excited than others. The other part is Daddy’s relentless nagging : ) He’s my first teacher, my biggest fan, and just all around great as a dad and fellow musician He’s also stubborn as a pitbull with a bone and when he locks onto an idea, he won’t let go. Hence, this particular video demo of another song we wrote together (the first one is “Across Time” which you can listen to here). Confession: even in this age of selfies, instagram stories and unparalleled extrovert-ism, I do not enjoy shooting videos of myself and especially don’t enjoy going back and watching them. But Daddy will NOT let up – and it makes me feel like I’m doing something for the song itself – which to me is a living entity that requires love and attention – sooooo I’ll keep doing them every now and then.

Here’s a little insight into our co-writing process – Daddy sends me an email of stream of consciousness poetry and sometimes I hear a song in there. This song’s genesis was my family’s last trip to visit us in Tucson and was his love ode to the many wondrous cacti that grow here. I turned it into a love song – showed Daddy – he tweaked it (it used to be a bluegrass-y uptempo) and now we have this. I shot this just in time for Daddy’s birthday on the 16th and he liked it. Hope you like it, too!

It’s Hard Work

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“there’s a hole in my pocket, and it’s leaking stars” 

You know that feeling when you realize the person you dreamed you’d be by now never quite got born? The courageous hero who saved the day? The shining diva who graced the giant stage? Anything but the day-to-day life you’re seeing stretched out in front of you? When you know there are stars inside you waiting to burst forth into the world, there’s more YOU in there somewhere.

But it’s hard work to turn this boat around at this stage in the journey. Even just taking those little tiny steps to make a change seems too much. And even if you take them, you’ll probably just fall on your ass in the process, in front of the world. But maybe you can get up again. Just one more time. Each time. And keep going. Because it’s Hard Work for all of us and we’re all in this together.

There’s a hole in my pocket and it’s leaking stars
One for each dream that never made it far
And all I can do is watch them as they slowly slip away. 

It’s a car full of memories, trying to run me down
Pedal to the metal, but I stood my ground
I stopped, turned around, stare into the double-barrel light 

It’s Hard Work to make the wrong things right, yes it is
It’s hard work to get up again and fight. 

Well I could pick up a needle, go find some thread
One end to the other until it’s closed again
But my hands are too heavy to fix anything today 

Well it’s hard work to make the wrong things right, yes it is.
Well it’s hard work to get up again and fight, but you do.
Well it’s hard work to find your one true light. Yeah, it is.
Yes it’s hard work, to get up again.

Music and lyrics by Cristina Williams

Bamboo and Roses

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My dad, Thomas Harrell Williams of Panama Park, Jacksonville, FL wrote this song after he got home from doing his duty in the Vietnam War. He was back living with his parents and was doing gigs at Gigi’s Lounge at the Ramada Inn many a night. He didn’t know it, but he was soon destined to start teaching history, end up in an inner city school and meet a fellow teacher who would change his life forever: a young, beautiful divorcee from Cuba with two young children. It was actually the third time they had crossed paths (that’s another story for another time) but they wouldn’t realize that until later.

He tried out his limited Spanish on her and scored a date. Before long, they were married and he got an instant family, which included a very shy, socially awkward but precocious little girl. This sudden father tried to introduce her to the ways of the guitar at the age of 5 but she demurred because it hurt her fingers. A few years later, he’d try again, with more luck. He introduced her to simple folk songs on a baritone ukelele – then graduated to a broader repertoire of old, obscure English and Appalachian tunes (most of which she’s forgotten by now, more’s the pity) and somewhere in the middle of all that, he taught her a finger-picking, brooding little tune called “Bamboo and Roses”.

Now, the little girl had started learning the guitar because she was very obedient and (mostly) did what she was told. She liked singing and it was nice to be able to handle the guitar enough to accompany herself. But when her dad (technically step-father, but always Daddy), showed her this lovely melancholy song with a repetitive plucking pattern for her picking hand and a cool ascending riff that made her dream of a slightly sepia-toned Shangri-La of fossilized beauty and magic- that was the first guitar song that really captured her imagination. The fact that Daddy had written it himself, well that made her see him in a new, slightly starry light. The song gave her a little ache in her heart that she didn’t really understand, but just knew that she liked it. A lot.

Over many (many) years of playing in little local folk festivals, the Italian restaurant in the neighborhood strip mall during summer break, and ultimately playing out in clubs, she would put the little song down for a while and then pick it back up. After more years passed and she had morphed through many different phases and fancies, she found herself drawn back to this simple, quiet song. A song a sensitive young man had penned during a turbulent volatile time in his country and after laying down his innocence to the gods of war. A song about beauty and Time and where have some of those old good things gone? I know at least some of them live in this song, in this little girl’s old woman heart. And maybe in you, too.

(Photo by Sam X on Unsplash)

the care and feeding of guitars

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I was on a visit to Florida recently – on a mission of mercy to help keep my dad company while my poor mother was recuperating from an accident that left her recovering in a rehabilitation facility for weeks. Long-time readers will know that Daddy is the one who got me into this music mess in the first place – he taught himself to play guitar back in the sixties, was a folk singer in Jacksonville for many years and passed along this heritage to me since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

So of course, on my visit there was a lot of guitar-talk and guitar-playing and then some guitar-buying when yet another eBay find washed up on Daddy shores: a Vega classical guitar circa 1964 – “The Limeliter’s Model”. The Limeliter’s were a popular folk group back in the early sixties – and this was in many ways a ‘poor man’s Martin’ – an affordable small guitar that sounded good and was easy to play.

The original label inside the Vega guitar

This one had an interesting face with dark threads streaking through the blonde veneer top. But upon inspection, Daddy realized the strings weren’t to his liking and the action was way too high (ie, the strings were too far from the fretboard for comfortable playing or good tone).

As it goes through the history of human families, I have had a long, sorry habit of brushing off Daddy’s vast realms of knowledge about acoustic guitars and the care and maintenance thereof with rolled teenage eyes. I kick myself now for all the times he wanted me to help him glue on a bridge or make some adjustments to one of his constantly rotating stable of American vintage guitars and I’d either help grudgingly or find some excuse like finishing some long overdue homework (which was likely true, but as Daddy liked to say ’never let school interfere with your education’).

So when Daddy mentioned that maybe I could assist him, I said ‘Hell yes!” and he set up shop on the back porch where the sign saying “Redneck Studios” is still slightly off kilter from last fall’s big hurricane.

As he snipped off the nylon strings and filed down the bridge, Daddy explained each step that he was taking while I helped hold the Vega at the right angle. I’d go fetch him tools that he needed from the rat’s nest of gear and tuners and bridge pins and other odds ’n ends nestled in jars and milk crates throughout his office.

First, he tried to dislodge the bridge (that ridge of bone down around where the pins are that keep the strings taut on the bottom end of a guitar). In this case, it wasn’t moving at all. He then tried a chisel and a mallet on the side and with gentle tapping tried to slide it out. But it just wouldn’t budge and you don’t want to force it so much that it’ll chip off.

So he decided to adjust the bridge in place. He started with a metal file, using it like a manicurist with a particularly tough hangnail, and started filing it down at an angle across the top. Then he realized it was taking too much time and broke out the Dremel, a little drill-like mechanism but with a round head with a sandpaper-like surface around the sides. This allowed him to gently grind away the surface of the bone, fine drifts of white dusting the face.

“Now hand me a #2 pencil and I’ll show you how to see where it’s still uneven.” He gently rubbed the side of the pencil lead across the top of the bridge and, sure enough, the sections that were still rising higher than the rest were a dark gray while the rest stayed relatively white. He finished his grinding and rubbed his thumb over the surface. Having done this for decades, he could eyeball the exact height he wanted so he went ahead and strung it back up.

Daddy getting ready to string the Vega back up.

He told me the story of the first guitar he’d bought. Over sixty years ago, he’d walked into one of the music stores in downtown Jacksonville, called American Music, with hard-earned money he’d been saving – it was time to buy his first real guitar! The salesman handed over a classical guitar much like this Vega but Daddy wanted a steel string guitar like the folk singers he’d been falling in love with. The man – eyes fixed firmly on the wad of cash in Daddy’s young fist – said “No problem!” and put on some steel strings himself to seal the deal. Daddy brought home his prize only to find the bridge had snapped off sure enough only a few days later. He’d brought the guitar back to get some satisfaction but the salesman said “That’s what you get when you buy that cheap stuff!” It was one of Daddy’s first – but not last – lessons in the dog-eat-dog nature of this world.

But now as he wound up the proper strings for this guitar, he was getting his own kind of recompense. Another stray guitar that he will fix and heal and love. There was still more work to do – a couple of the strings were buzzing – giving off “wolf tones” – and Daddy used a special set of nut files, one for each string of a guitar. Then he diagnosed a loose brace by pressing down his fingerpads on certain areas of the face while strumming – like a doctor palpitating a patient. Before long, that Vega was sounding better than it probably ever had and it fairly thrummed with happiness in Daddy’s callused hands.

I felt so much pride in this demonstration of decades of love and care – and regret at how much I had disregarded it as a youngster. Daddy was and always will be a teacher – whether it’s the social studies and history of his public high school career or the care and feeding of guitars.