Old songs
08/09/14 04:36
I‘ve been playing my guitar a little bit lately. It has rested in its case quite a bit over the last 20 years. I used to play all the time. A guitar is pretty much stock and trade for a youth minister and I’ve had three memorable guitars in my life. I still own two of them, a Yamaha six string and my pride and joy, a Guild 3/4 12-string. I just played a few chords with our House Band at church when our usual guitarists weren’t available on Sunday. The guitar needs new strings and I wasn’t pleased with the sound. And our monitor speakers aren't loud enough for the band. We can’t hear what we sound like out in the house. We need a little work to get our act together. We’re doing something new for our church and it will take a little while to get everything together.
Getting out my guitar also meant dusting off some of the oldies. For years I used to warm up with a Laura Nyro song, Save the Country:
Come on, people! Come on, children! Come on down to the glory river Gonna wash you up, and wash you down Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down
And I got fury in my soul Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal In my mind I can't study war no more Save the people! Save the children! Save the country now!
The chords are simple and the quick triplets after people! and children! in the last line are good pick work for my right hand.
My fingers, of course, are out of practice. They slip off of the strings and my bridges sometimes allow an errant string to sound off pitch. I was blaming the strings yesterday morning and promptly ordered a new set after worship.
Of course it isn’t really the strings. The truth is that playing guitar isn’t one of my gifts. At least I don’t play as well as a lot of other pickers. I love the sound. But what drew me to the guitar wasn’t the exemplary picking of Chet Atkins as much as it was the expressive and emotional lyrics of the songs of my teenage years.
And Laura Nyro is one of the really great songwriters of that time. Maybe what made her great was that she lost her mother at a relatively early age. Her mom was only 49 when she died of ovarian cancer. There was something real about her songs about life and death. Several of her songs became more famous by being performed by other artists. the 5th Dimension sang several of her songs. Carole King, Barbara Streisand and others recorded her songs.
A lot of people don’t know that she wrote “And When I Die.” They think of it as a Blood Sweat & Tears song. It was also recorded by Thee Dog Night and even Peter, Paul & Mary.
Folks my age, who never learned the whole song at least know the chorus:
And when I die, and when I'm gone There'll be one child born In this world to carry on, to carry on
But it is the opening of the song that I think of when I think of Laura Nyro:
I'm not scared of dying And I don't really care If it's peace you find in dying Well, then let the time be near
Like her mother, Laura died at the age of 49 of the same kind of cancer. That was back in 1997. She was only five years older than I. It is too young to die, but then we don’t get to choose the timing of our dying. Still, there have been a lot of children born since that time. A child born at the time of her death would be 17 now - a high school junior. And somewhere out there is a young person who is beginning to translate the emotions of their lives and the times in which we live into the lyrics of songs that will live much longer than the span of that person’s life.
I don’t know if the songs that meant so much to me years ago will have similar meanings for new generations. Perhaps each generation needs to find its own music and make its own soundtrack.
I’ve heard that Billy Childs has a new Laura Nyro retrospective album coming out. I don’t buy much music, but I’m thinking I’ll probably look for that one. It’s not quite the soundtrack of my life, but there will probably be some words there that are capable of moving me.
Give me my freedom for as long as I be All I ask of living is to have no chains on me All I ask of living is to have no chains on me And all I ask of dying is to go naturally Oh, I want to go naturally
It was interesting to be a part of the new worship format at church yesterday. I found myself being a bit of a skeptic about all of the changes. I am usually one of the first ones to hop on the bandwagon and I am eager to see change in the church, but it didn’t feel quite natural yet. We were forcing the music just a bit and we haven’t quite found our voice for all of the changes. But I know that change is essential to our life. The congregation has changed a lot in just the last year. We’ve had more funerals than ever before, and the pace doesn’t seem to be changing. We’re seeing new faces and those new faces bring with them different traditions and different expectations for worship. Fitting all of the different pieces into a single hour of worship is sometimes a challenge. We need more practice before we get our act together.
And maybe we need someone to write us a few new songs. I’m pretty sure that the soundtrack of my young adult years isn’t the tune for the next generation of our congregation. And the truth is that none of us will go on forever. We need to make room for the new things that God is doing.
And when I die and when I'm dead, dead and gone There'll be one child born In our world to carry on, to carry on, yeah yeah
Getting out my guitar also meant dusting off some of the oldies. For years I used to warm up with a Laura Nyro song, Save the Country:
Come on, people! Come on, children! Come on down to the glory river Gonna wash you up, and wash you down Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down
And I got fury in my soul Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal In my mind I can't study war no more Save the people! Save the children! Save the country now!
The chords are simple and the quick triplets after people! and children! in the last line are good pick work for my right hand.
My fingers, of course, are out of practice. They slip off of the strings and my bridges sometimes allow an errant string to sound off pitch. I was blaming the strings yesterday morning and promptly ordered a new set after worship.
Of course it isn’t really the strings. The truth is that playing guitar isn’t one of my gifts. At least I don’t play as well as a lot of other pickers. I love the sound. But what drew me to the guitar wasn’t the exemplary picking of Chet Atkins as much as it was the expressive and emotional lyrics of the songs of my teenage years.
And Laura Nyro is one of the really great songwriters of that time. Maybe what made her great was that she lost her mother at a relatively early age. Her mom was only 49 when she died of ovarian cancer. There was something real about her songs about life and death. Several of her songs became more famous by being performed by other artists. the 5th Dimension sang several of her songs. Carole King, Barbara Streisand and others recorded her songs.
A lot of people don’t know that she wrote “And When I Die.” They think of it as a Blood Sweat & Tears song. It was also recorded by Thee Dog Night and even Peter, Paul & Mary.
Folks my age, who never learned the whole song at least know the chorus:
And when I die, and when I'm gone There'll be one child born In this world to carry on, to carry on
But it is the opening of the song that I think of when I think of Laura Nyro:
I'm not scared of dying And I don't really care If it's peace you find in dying Well, then let the time be near
Like her mother, Laura died at the age of 49 of the same kind of cancer. That was back in 1997. She was only five years older than I. It is too young to die, but then we don’t get to choose the timing of our dying. Still, there have been a lot of children born since that time. A child born at the time of her death would be 17 now - a high school junior. And somewhere out there is a young person who is beginning to translate the emotions of their lives and the times in which we live into the lyrics of songs that will live much longer than the span of that person’s life.
I don’t know if the songs that meant so much to me years ago will have similar meanings for new generations. Perhaps each generation needs to find its own music and make its own soundtrack.
I’ve heard that Billy Childs has a new Laura Nyro retrospective album coming out. I don’t buy much music, but I’m thinking I’ll probably look for that one. It’s not quite the soundtrack of my life, but there will probably be some words there that are capable of moving me.
Give me my freedom for as long as I be All I ask of living is to have no chains on me All I ask of living is to have no chains on me And all I ask of dying is to go naturally Oh, I want to go naturally
It was interesting to be a part of the new worship format at church yesterday. I found myself being a bit of a skeptic about all of the changes. I am usually one of the first ones to hop on the bandwagon and I am eager to see change in the church, but it didn’t feel quite natural yet. We were forcing the music just a bit and we haven’t quite found our voice for all of the changes. But I know that change is essential to our life. The congregation has changed a lot in just the last year. We’ve had more funerals than ever before, and the pace doesn’t seem to be changing. We’re seeing new faces and those new faces bring with them different traditions and different expectations for worship. Fitting all of the different pieces into a single hour of worship is sometimes a challenge. We need more practice before we get our act together.
And maybe we need someone to write us a few new songs. I’m pretty sure that the soundtrack of my young adult years isn’t the tune for the next generation of our congregation. And the truth is that none of us will go on forever. We need to make room for the new things that God is doing.
And when I die and when I'm dead, dead and gone There'll be one child born In our world to carry on, to carry on, yeah yeah