Season 178: "Tell me a story"

"White Room" by Cream ... yes, it is a story song

Thanks to Janet (bonesigh) for capturing video of me at the open mic Friday night en route to STRUM ... it was so exciting to meet her and get to spend an evening together on my turf. I had the last official slot of the night ... 10pm, and by then all the guitar players who knew "White Room" had left.

I do this song all the time - you all are probably sick of it by now - but I wanted to do it again for story song Season, because "White Room" is a terrific story full of poetic imagery, about a guy whose lover is leaving him on a train and he wishes she wouldn't go. After a brief musical interlude, during which time passes and he heals somewhat, he meets a new woman at a party ... but by the end of the third verse, she too is fixing to leave him.

The only repeated phrase in the verses is "goodbye windows" - it is applied to both women - which I think is such an amazingly evocative word painting ... we've all experience waving goodbye to someone we wish wasn't leaving, who is waving back from a receding train window.

(Okay, there's also "tired starlings" ... to me that's the least obvious line in the song. It appears to be about the rather bleak locale ... one post I read said "It's so depressing, even the birds are tired.")

Anyway, I forged ahead with just my fabulous bass player Rich and awesome drummer Dave ... and we managed to make our little 3-piece band sound like a full rock band. At least I think we did.



(If you are interested in a more detailed exposition of the story of "White Room", I wrote one up for Season 128, Fred's story song Season.)
 
"Come a Little Bit Closer" - live, with Janet - and "Don't Give Up on Us, Baby"

My suggestion for STRUM group video song was "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans, because I thought it met all three requirements - reasonably easy, reasonably familiar, and we had a chart already, but there was not much enthusiasm for it, and it wasn't as familiar to folks as I thought.

So Janet and I thought it would be a fun song to do together at the open mic Friday night as a joint entry. We did indeed have fun ... and, with our guitar player Rich ... who so brilliant spoke the line "Vamos, Jose's on his way!" in response to our "Then I heard the guitar player say..." and delivered a kick-ass guitar solo in the middle ... we had a very promising rehearsal.

Alas, Rich forgot his line, we messed up his solo, my harmony vocal was closer to the mic than Janet's lead, etc. But you can tell from the video how much fun we had together, and I thought you might want to see that.




For our first song together, we thought it would be fun to do a song that we've actually done together before. We had never met face-to-face before Friday night ... but for BirdsEye's "Yeah, Baby!" week (Season 115), we did an online collab of "Don't Give Up on Us, Baby". We even won the random prize that week!

It's not really a story song, and I think we're both at quota by now ... so I'll just put the link here from our live performance Friday, no embedded video.

Okay, that is all from me from STRUM weekend!
 
Back home from my music camp (where I taught Beginning Uke, Advanced Uke and Harmony Singing). Just in time to record a story song for your season Tootler. This one I learned from the Delmore Brothers - Fugitive's Lament.
 
Last edited:
Season 178 is now officially over. I'll listen to the last few entries and post comments later. Probably tomorrow as I'm pretty much tied up for the rest of today.

I make it we have 96 entries - a pretty good haul, though not the largest. There have been some excellent entries with a wide variety of stories. I found it gratifying that quite a few of you chose traditional songs but the entries show that story songs are found in a wide variety of genres.

Meantime, why don't you pop over to Season 179 and start entering one song with the tune of another.
 
SOTU 178 Bonus Abdul Abulbul Amir

Nice Season Geoff. Since its over now I'm going to post a couple that I did for your Season but didn't want to go against your posting guidelines. You don't have to comment or add to the playlist, I understand. I would like our fellow Seasonistas to get the chance to hear these though if they want to.
 
It was fun :) It's too bad I had to "Vamous" so quickly afterwards to get to my hotel an hour away to make that 6 hours of driving total. Then I stayed up till like 1:30 gabbing and playing with Tommy!
My suggestion for STRUM group video song was "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans, because I thought it met all three requirements - reasonably easy, reasonably familiar, and we had a chart already, but there was not much enthusiasm for it, and it wasn't as familiar to folks as I thought.

So Janet and I thought it would be a fun song to do together at the open mic Friday night as a joint entry. We did indeed have fun ... and, with our guitar player Rich ... who so brilliant spoke the line "Vamos, Jose's on his way!" in response to our "Then I heard the guitar player say..." and delivered a kick-ass guitar solo in the middle ... we had a very promising rehearsal.

Alas, Rich forgot his line, we messed up his solo, my harmony vocal was closer to the mic than Janet's lead, etc. But you can tell from the video how much fun we had together, and I thought you might want to see that.




For our first song together, we thought it would be fun to do a song that we've actually done together before. We had never met face-to-face before Friday night ... but for BirdsEye's "Yeah, Baby!" week (Season 115), we did an online collab of "Don't Give Up on Us, Baby". We even won the random prize that week!

It's not really a story song, and I think we're both at quota by now ... so I'll just put the link here from our live performance Friday, no embedded video.

Okay, that is all from me from STRUM weekend!
 
Hi Geoff I cant see my song in the playlist I made the deadline lol once again thanks for hosting cheers mate :)

I haven't got round to listening to it yet. You posted about an hour after I posted the last lot of comments. I'm hoping to catch up with last few entries later today.
 
Finally caught up with the last few entries. Sorry it's a little later than expected but my wife had decided to have the living room carpet cleaned yesterday so there was a certain amount of moving stuff around to do.

Anyway here's my comments on the last few entries.

ukuleledaveey: Diddy Wah Diddy - Great to see you back in the seasons and sounding chirpy too. Good song and nicely played. Do I detect a Ukey Dave inspired strum there?

The OnlyUkeThatMatters: This Year - Excellent, Ralf. That electric uke sounds great. Good song too.

Come Dancing - Great stuff, Ralf & good sounding uke. Super song that's not covered as often as other Kinks songs. Ray Davies is a great song writer.

bubbly193: Waltzing Matilda - Good song choice and the balance between ukulele and voice was much better. Tommy has a point about making sure you have the song down first before adding in the accent if you're not singing in your own natural accent. While we are not expecting perfection in the Seasons, if you make a blooper like you did at the beginning, it's better if you edit it out before you post your video unless you are deliberately making a feature of the out takes and even then it is more usual to add them at the end.

uke can1: White Room - I enjoyed that, Wendy. It sounded really good with the bass and drums added. Unfortunately your sound man hadn't quite got the balance right. The bass was too prominent (except for his brill solo, of course) and your voice needed turning up a bit. You were obviously having fun, though and that came over.

Ukecan1/bonesigh: Come A Little Bit Closer - Again, good fun. You obviously enjoyed yourselves there.

myrnaukulele: Fugitive's Lament - Lovely, Myrna. I'm glad you were able to get and entry in this week. I always enjoy your entries.

I think I have everyone on the playlist. Please check and let me know if your entry is missing.
 
Top Bottom