“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”
Have you – an admirer of such wide-ranging musical styles as classical, opera and Appalachian hill country songs – ever marveled at the ability of some tunesmiths to craft lyrics so memorable that Shakespeare himself would have snapped his quill in two with jealousy.
And by memorable lyrics, I am of course, referring to songs written many years ago by steely-eyed men who, in between roof-raising performances at smoky Chicago clubs, engaged in questionable activities including but not limited to “messin’ around.”
After a long night of “messin’ around” they would return home and jot down their impressions of the evening, which were then set to music and given titles such as “I been up to no good again,” or, if the evening ended badly, “I believe somebody stole my wallet.”
Everything went well until their wives heard these songs on the radio, which explains the advent of such later works as “My baby she made me sleep on the couch” and “My head’s ringing from the frying pan again.”
With the proper direction, almost anyone – except rich folks who own fancy calfskin driving loafers – can pen lyrics of this caliber.
In recognition of this weekend’s spring blues festival (June 6 and & 7), we at Orillia Today are offering, at no charge to you the reader, a quick and almost pain-free blues songwriting tutorial.
Our hope is that, by the end of this column, you will have the confidence to leap onto the nearest stage and amaze friends, family and office colleagues who will from that moment on refer to you as “Mr. Blues” or possibly even “da man.”
Unless you are a woman, and then you will be called “Big Mamma (insert last name here).”
Lesson No.1: Pick a subject.
Popular topics in past have included rent troubles, job dissatisfaction, a sudden and unexpected job loss and revenge for wrongful dismissal.
Marital infidelities run a close second – but remember, this could get you into trouble and result in your penning a song about sleeping on the couch.
Lesson No.2: Don’t sweat the small stuff, such as sentence structure or spelling.
The beauty of blues music is the complete freedom it enjoys from the stuffy old rules of grammar.
This is why, for example, the late, great Muddy Waters could assure listeners that “Everything gonna be all right this morning.”
Likewise, fellow blues master Jimmy Reed famously asked “Baby, what you want me to do?” or, as it first sounded to my ears, “Whachoo want me to do?”
Lesson No.3:
Learn three chords on the guitar.
Pick any three and they will sound sweet, so long as you pinch your face up in an expression usually associated with a groin injury or prolonged child labour.
No matter how fumble-fingered your fretwork, the audience will eat up the anguished look, even if secretly your mind is occupied by thoughts of that leaky basement toilet that needs repairing or the vegetable garden that will not grow.
Then again, is there anything more depressing and blues-worthy than vegetables that will not grow?
“My cucumbers are such a sorry mess, if I don’t get something hapnun in this veggie patch soon, we’ll have no pickles for the guests.”
