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