Seeing Them Off (vocal version)

This is a song I wrote on uke back in 1983. A month ago I posted an instrumental version of the song. Here is the version with lyrics. I like playing this both ways.

Lyrics:

Dawn, run wake the sun up
Let the morning come early today
Bring him out of his slumber
And we'll all wish them well on their way
As we drive through the night to where
The ship points to the stars
Nodding heads in the back leaning close
And they'll go, go, test their wings against the void
Go, go, search the pebbles in the ether

Soon all that a world holds
Is just a memory fading from sight
Nodding heads will wake up to
Count down and be hurled into night
In their dreams they're feeling the warmth of
Other suns on the backs of their legs
The great adventure starts here, starts now
And they'll go, go, test their wings against the void
Go to worlds that never felt the caress of footsteps

And what is the Earth then?
A story, a mystical name
A legend believed less and less
'Til mankind's forgot from whence it came
So Dawn, run wake the sun up
And bring him round to join us in seeing them off

Here's a link to the instrumental version I posted last month:

http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?51169-Seeing-Them-Off-(original)

A very ambitious tune.... again, I really dig the picking on this and the melody works well, especially like the big vocal jump at the beginning of the verses - it's a good song. The lyrics are great - well written with a real story to tell.....I hear this with strings, synth, full band.... large scale epic space-man rock opera kind of music. Sounds nice just on the uke, as well..... thanks for sharing.

To tell you the truth, I always heard this as just an acoustic ballad. All of the songs I used to hear about space travel were always trying to sound as futuristic as possible, usually with a lot of synthesizers (link to an example below). So I tried to go the other way when I wrote this song -- "Yeah, you can go off in your rocket ship, Mr. Hotshot Galactic Explorer, and we will just sit here and play our folksy stringed instruments. Now get off my lawn!"


One O' Clock Tomorrow by the Canadian band FM