Monday, October 17, 2016

Noirsville Tune of the Week

Jerry Jeff Walker's version of Bob Dylan's One Too Many Mornings has a great noir feel to it, check it out.

"Walker, perhaps drawing on country’s greater propensity for heartache than anything found in folk music, mines this sense of mournful acceptance to profound depths. It’s just him, alone as can be, drawing out each syllable just this side of a quiet sob, backed by a lone quiet guitar, harmonica, and a touch of piano. All of them underscoring the singer’s plaintive tone of regret for love gone wrong, with no one but the fates to blame.

I hear you, my man, I hear you and feel for you.

Walker is the very essence of lone-some here. The lyrics are a man stripped to his emotional bones, wailing about being alone. How can you fast-pace or noise that up with a bunch of clanging electric guitar and organ?

Sorrow like this lasts forever—or at least that is the fear of the sorrowful one. And the words take halfway to forever to emerge from his broken heart.

There won’t be any jaunty tripping or rocking or banjoing through this devastated landscape, at least today. The song has to be stripped down, just as the singer is, stripped of all the joy and comfort he once knew, all the hope he once harbored.

It’s a lonesome road ahead, and it stretches for a long time, and there will be no fast car or loud guitar to help speed it along. Jerry Jeff gives this reality perfect expression in a resung song that is even better than the original—and miles ahead of any treatment since."

from Twitter: @AndrewHidas 


One Too Many Mornings


Down the street the dogs are barkin'
And the day is a-gettin' dark
As the night comes in a-fallin'
The dogs'll lose their bark
An' the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
Yes, I'm one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind
From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
And I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An' I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I'm one too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind
It's a restless hungry feeling
That don't mean no one no good
When ev'rything I'm a-sayin'
You can say it just as good
You're right from your side
I'm right from mine
We're both just one too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind

No comments:

Post a Comment