Song and Meaning
by Brian Holmberg
By way of a general taxonomy, the songs fell into three broad domains; Mystical, Non-Dual Types, Blues, and Others.
1. THE MYSTICAL TYPES: (LONESOME ROAD, FISHWAGON, SMOKE FILLED ROOM, BLAKE RAIN, THE SIMPLE FEELING OF BEING)
Being a fan of Johnny Cash with his simple, but inspired stories of religion and Christianity set me to thinking - tongue and cheek again - of writing Johnny Cash style songs but with non-Dual, Eastern mystical lyrics and themes! What an unusual combination that would be; Johnny singing about the Dreamwalkers, the Tao, the Gateless Gate, the Sound of One Hand Clapping, etc. It was certainly an interesting idea, and a novel concept that awaited realization (No pun intended).
LONESOME ROAD was originally written with this specifically in mind. It was intended to be sung "like Cash", and appeared (at least to me) to be a song that Johnny would sing - with its existential and apocalyptic allusions. We even recorded a version with Cash style vocals, but scrapped it when Jeff suggested singing it in a more bluegrass style - and that's what we went with.
The remaining songs deviated from purely a Cash style to include other musical styles, but retained the mystical and non-dual themes. FISHWAGON, SMOKE FILLED ROOM, and BLAKE RAIN are pure attempts in this direction.
THE SIMPLE FEELING OF BEING is of course more of a narration of my favorite Ken Wilber quote, and embodies so beautifully, with such depth the realization of the non-dual worldview.
2. BLUES: (LOST IN THE NIGHT, HOWLIN BLUES)
That old, Southern, gravely vocal style of blues embodied by artists like HOWLIN WOLF and MUDDY WATERS has always been appealing to me. So it's not surprising that my blues numbers would be heavily influenced by them. Jeff was asked to do his best to sound like HOWLIN WOLF as much as possible and to embody that persona so to speak, and I think he did a great job of it. The "Killing Floor" appears in both songs, and is an allusion to the slave days when slaves were forced to work from sunrise to sundown, and then sleep "on the floor." This was primal floor that birthed the blues that was to come for all generations - and I wanted to pay homage to this fact with this reference.
3. OTHERS: (LIVIN IN PRISON, THE WESTLAKE POLKA, GOONGLOW, THROUGH THE POURING RAIN)
The remaining songs technically don't fall into the previous domains. LIVIN IN PRISON is simultaneously a homage to Johnny Cash as well as my love of prison movies. THE WESTLAKE POLKA is my best attempt to suggest "polka" with a keyboard. THROUGH THE POURING RAIN was going to be a 50's style malt shop song or something like that, but when Rush penned his lyrics we decided to stay with that. GOONGLOW is a musical that is perhaps open to a wider range of subjective interpretation - is it somber or happy, suggestive of light or shadows, triumph or tragedy?
Notes for BLAKE RAIN, and THROUGH THE POURING RAIN
BLAKE RAIN was designed to be a "college radio" type song from the start - a basic structure with a short, simple lead solo. The lyrics were inspired by the great English Mystic William Blake, and the chorus is essentially a remake of his famous poem from Augries of Innocence:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
To hold infinity in your hand
And eternity in an hour
The lyric was also inspired by the famous non-dual realization poem (Dogen):
This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful!
What Dreamwalkers we all are
Awakened, the one great truth
Black Rain on the Temple roof
My first choice for the song title was "Black Rain", but with a little twist, I was able to include the tribute to William Blake. I actually worked out the remade chorus to this song first, before I wrote the rest of the words.
And of course it was Blake who also wrote the famous lines:
"If the Doors of Perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite".
So this one is really a major tribute to Blake, but there is a little Plato thrown in as well, with the allusions to the cave, the shadows and the light - all from Plato's famous Cave metaphor from the Republic. Blake and Plato were really saying the same things; that we don't perceive reality in its fundamental iss-ness, but rather an overly processed version, and we mistake for Reality with a capital R, when in fact it is a "fun-house" distortion of the Ultimate Ground of Being, which is Reality with a capital R.
Actually, after we recorded it I had a great idea for a tweak in the last lyric and I was tempted to re-do it to include it, but we were running so far behind of schedule I opted not to. But for the record, if I could have done it again, the first verse that is repeated later in the song would be open with:
"I AM the rain falling on the roof". First you hear it, then you ARE it - wow! This would have been so cool !!
THROUGH THE POURING RAIN - I had written the music for this complete, with the idea of trying to write lyrics in a 50's style throwback song. I had literally just finished the music for it, and hadn’t started on any lyrics when Rush came over, and for the hell of it I played the music I had composed, and he was able to pen the lyrics on the spot - so we had a song pretty much complete.
After looking at his lyrics, I might quote Robert Plant, when he introduced Stairway to Heaven live; "I think this is a song of hope".
