Tag Archives: tuesday tunes

~tuesday tunes~ in my life

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on the two year engage-aversary of my husband asking me to marry him, i thought a stroll down wedding memory lane, accompanied by a tune, would be just the thing.

johnny cash was the second musical artist rich told me he liked on our first date. the first was rusted root, and every other one since then has been met with enthusiastic agreement on my part, but… johnny cash. if there was one moment when i “knew” about rich, it would be hard for me to pin down, but by the time he was telling me about his love for johnny, if i hadn’t already “known,” it would have been a moment of that kind. knowing all the words to so many johnny cash songs was a matter of course for my brothers and i, as his cassette tapes lived in the aerostar minivan we rode around in as kids, as well as the green farm truck’s tape deck. a boy named sue, a burning ring of fire, water 4 feet high and rising, and a 49-50-51-52-53-54-55-56-57-58-59 automobile were integral parts of the soundtrack of my upbringing.

the song in my life appears on cash’s american 4 album, and rich and i had sung along to that, and to desperado together within the first month of our relationship. i think he took to heart the line from desperado, “you better let somebody love you before it’s too late.” he did let me love him, we kept falling in love, and from here on out, we know we are only going to love each other more…

as we were deciding on songs for the wedding, we easily chose our recessional song, and once we found rainbow love, it was a natural for the processional of our parents. the last song chosen took us a while, for my dad and i to walk in on, and maybe it was because it seemed like the most important one. we listened back to the stack of cd mixes i have made for rich over the years, roughly two per year (i often make one for our anniversary and another for when he goes to country fair). we finally got back to the very first one, mixed in june 2012, where among such favorites as neil young’s silver and gold, tom petty’s wildflowers, and the highwaymen singing true love travels on a gravel road, there was johnny cash’s solid baritone voice singing a beatles song. we knew as soon as we heard it again that it was the best way to sum up exactly what was going on here. the two of us, with our advanced age, full lives, children, and pasts; but also with a lot of work we’ve done enabling us to greet each other’s age, quirks, families, and histories with kindness. we are only going to appreciate and love each other more and more, the more of our lives we get to share.

photo credit to wedding boss, yes she really did it all! (the rest of the photos below are by my photographer-in-chief! who is also a good friend and with whom i stand shoulder to shoulder on saturdays selling veggies.)

this is when the song came on… dad helped me steady those emotions by coaching me on walking nice and slowly.

i am pretty sure this is when i was laughing because i realized i didn’t know the exact procedure for how i would unhitch from dad down at the trees, and i was picturing my dad, seasoned farmer that he is, making a wide turn and backing me in like a wagon.

“though i know i’ll never lose affection

for people and things that went before

i know i’ll often stop and think about them

in my life i love you more”

 

pancakes peeking in the distant corner of this photo are the type of thing i only got to see later from the wedding photos (and that also goes for where my own son was sitting in the crowd). i was looking in a very singular direction while i was taking this walk!

johnny and june have been mentioned a time or two on this blog, and an added layer of meaning in choosing this song for us was looking to our role models in the relationship category (not limited to famous people, but including our own parents and certain friends and family as well). this was a big theme we intended to celebrate on our wedding day. looking around us that day, thinking of those who’ve gone, and those who remain, appreciating the love they have given to us and have modeled for us, was a natural part of turning and looking at each other and saying, “there is no one compares with you.”

~tuesday tunes~ rainbow love

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when rich and i were deciding on songs for our wedding, we had a lot of fun playing back through our favorite love songs and thinking about what music best suited our story and our celebration. we ended up using 3 songs during our ceremony, and the other two i will talk about later did come from those “oldies” that have been with us for years as part of our soundtrack. the song we ended up starting with, for our parents to walk into the ceremony, was newer to us, only discovered this past year, but so perfectly fitting that we knew it had to be a part of our wedding day.

i had googled “rainbow love songs,” because i’m me, and that was how i discovered this gem from roy orbison, on a lesser-known album called still in love with you, which was apparently considered one of his worst. i guess with roy orbison, you still get amazing when he’s giving his worst, because there is no voice like his. both rich and i love it, and i know my own love for roy’s singing goes back to riding in my dad’s pickup truck and singing along together with roy on the truck’s tape deck. i believe rich has said his dad also appreciated roy’s singing, and it only made sense that this would be the song for our parents’ walk-in. (actually my dad had to wait until song number 2, but don’t worry, that song is great, too!)

when i saw the title rainbow love in my google search results, i knew we’d need to obtain this song, but it was when i finally listened to it that i realized it was a little more than just another song to add to a mix. you really just have to listen to it to understand what i mean, but the song makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a spring day frolicking through a meadow, with its fluttering flutes and melodic orchestral arrangement. then to top it off, roy’s angelic voice sings about finding the love at the end of the rainbow. i love living in a world where you can find still more perfect songs all your life, even ones written in the distant past. (the “video” is not action-packed, but is a convenient way to share it so friends can have a listen.)

I looked behind a silver cloud, I found a pretty rainbow there
I walked out to the rainbow’s end and found a rainbow love
The one that I was looking for, the dream that I was dreaming of
There, down at the rainbow’s end I found a rainbow love

I found my pot of gold, my rainbow love
Just you and all your loving, charming rainbow love
I searched, hoped someday I’d find someone to bring me peace of mind
I found what I’ve been dreaming of when I found my rainbow love

I found my pot of gold, my rainbow love
Just you and all your loving, charming rainbow love
I searched, hoped someday I’d find someone to bring me peace of mind
I found what I’ve been dreaming of when I found my rainbow love

i know that during our wedding, not everyone could have been able to focus on listening to the songs, so i wanted to feature each one here as i share wedding memories. there was so much about that day that fit so perfectly with the rainbow metaphor, and all the color we bring to each others’ lives and why we want to spend our lives together. this song summed it up in such a beautifully simple way.

on our honeymoon, we were served in a diner by a woman named fran who, as we were leaving, told me, “this is the one. this is the end of the rainbow one.” i had not said a single word to her about rainbows, but i had shared that we were on our honeymoon. i’d like to think that something about the way rich and i treat each other comes through to other people, and even this complete stranger in the middle of montana could tell that this is something special, shining through the everyday clouds like a rainbow.

~tuesday tunes~ something good coming

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the dragon house soundtrack has consisted of every tom petty and the heartbreakers album on repeat, since we lost tom. our alarm clock has been playing the last dj and the living room player has rotated through wildflowers, hypnotic eye, highway companion, and mojo. it was while quinn sat on my lap in the happy spot one afternoon while mojo was playing that he told me he liked this song, and i had to admit i agreed. while i like all the other songs folks have shared since tom’s passing, they tend to come from the greatest hits album, ubiquitous in music collections across america, while i think a lot of people may be missing out on some of his more recent albums. 2010 is “recent” ish, right?

since i know at least a couple of my readers will want to look up the lyrics, i will save you that step:

I’m watching the water

Watching the coast

Suddenly I know

What I want the most

And I want to tell you

Still I hold back

I need some time

Get my life on track

I know that look on your face

But there’s somethin’ lucky about this place

And there’s somethin’ good comin’

For you and me

Somethin’ good comin’

There has to be

And I’m thinking ’bout mama

And about the kids

And the way we lived

And the things we did

How she never had a chance

Never caught a break

And how we pay for our big mistakes

I know so well the look on your face

And there’s somethin’ lucky about this place

There’s somethin’ good comin’

Just over the hill

Somethin’ good comin’

I know it will

And I’m in for the long run

Wherever it goes

Ridin’ the river

Wherever it goes

And I’m an honest man

Work’s all I know

You take that away

Don’t know where to go

And I know that look that’s on your face

There’s somethin’ lucky about this place

There’s somethin’ good comin’

For you and me

Somethin’ good comin’

There has to be

my working man is on 10-hour shifts this week (monday’s turned into 12 as they took advantage of a dry day to get as far as they could on their current project) and i’m mulling over the experiences of friends shared in #metoo posts, pondering domestic violence awareness month and how to use my voice most effectively, hearing a lot of unease from friends in general, feeling some myself, especially in the context of my career, dreading the onslaught of winter… but also savoring the last blooms of summer, the first wood stove fires, appreciating my hard working husband, and the steady supply of work available to him, enjoying the bittersweet emotional processing my son has been doing, enjoying a small uptick in creative energy and time to deploy it, enjoying this coffee i’m sipping this morning, and feeling gratitude for this life. something good coming has just the right sound for today, suggesting spirals and cycles, a bit melancholy, but ultimately hopeful.

 

~tuesday tunes~ almost heaven

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while summer swiftly swished away, one of the ways the emotional waves of wedding were felt by me, was music. i decided it would be fun to share music a bit more frequently in general, and thought i’d give music a day of the week in which to organize itself here in the cyber canning jars. monday was taken… so tuesday tunes it is! to kick it off, i thought i’d share 3 versions of a song that captures the arc of emotion of my summer. like the ocean waves i describe to quinn in my best yoga teacher voice during the dolphin story at bedtime, these sound waves were protective; i tell him to picture himself held by the waves, as they are big enough to hold it all, so we can release and fall asleep and let go of it all. the emotions of weddings are just so big, and so in like manner, the best way i can think of to start to share that enormous emotional journey is to share some of the music which helped me release some of the big feels.

i did not have major plans for video at our wedding, though because we live in such a modern age, we received several great unanticipated videos from friends and my now step-daughter. in the aftermath of it all, though, i discovered that i myself had taken only one single phone video during the entire time my family and rich’s family came together to celebrate our marriage. this is the one, and it does a great job of summing up the brim-fullness of this time. just to orient you, from my vantage point i begin in the corner sitting by the door, where i am perched on the lap of my then fiance. we didn’t yet have our entire families in attendance, but we had a pretty good representation, and my best woman, too! dad had already picked up his/my guitar, regaled us with roger miller songs and best woman’s request for the very unfortunate man (ever appropriate for weddings, this was also sung on my big brother’s wedding day!) dad then sang the one i would have requested, had he not gone ahead and played it without me needing to ask.

 

 

was i the only one who danced around the raw sienna living room rug with their mom to the warm crackle of the record player making john denver croon his greatest hits in the 80s? “all my memories gather ’round her” is a perfect way to describe my mother, which is always who i think of when i hear that line, including as we gathered around my dad to listen to this rendition of take me home, country roads. we grew up on a country road surrounded by rolling hills, and my mom did her own growing up in a place devoid of hills known as the bronx, but her heart for the mountains of the adirondacks certainly qualifies her for the description of “mountain mama” as well.

my heart was so full, looking around at our loved ones gathered around, the children immersed so fully in their play in the next room, and listening to this song that has always captured the very essence of longing for home for me.

~~~

we departed for our honeymoon a blissfully blurry several days later. our first stop was a brandi carlile concert at the oregon zoo, and after brandi pulled on our heartstrings with the story and wherever is your heart, she thought she’d break the poignant tension with a sing-along!

this is the song, though not the performance we saw, but from another venue.

unfortunately, i was unable to participate in the sing-along until she got to the bridge, because i was too busy sobbing into my husband’s shoulder. it was difficult even then to croak the words, “radio reminds me of my home far away, driving down the road i get a feeling like i should have been home yesterday… yesterday.” there were two moments for me when the emotional floodgates opened after the wedding: the first involved laughter at the beach the day after the wedding, and that story is still to come, but the second was a good cry at an outdoor concert, surrounded by thousands of people.

~~~

after we returned home and started sweeping away dried petals and resuming normal life, except new and improved because it’s married life, i made up some new mix cds based on songs that had come up during the wedding week and honeymoon week. i found a version of brandi carlile singing country roads with emmylou harris, so of course that went on the mix. riding in the car while i overplayed said mix, quinn absorbed the song and began to sing along. in a few short years his voice will no longer be in the right register to warble along with brandi, so i decided to record it for posterity. one evening after he had it memorized, we sat on his bedroom floor and i strummed on dad’s/my guitar while quinn sang:

maybe one day he’ll sing along with it when it comes on the radio, feeling the things i feel when i sing it, but about this home of ours. “life is old there… older than the trees… younger than the mountains… blowing like a breeze.”

~tuesday tunes~

audio inspiration, musical memories and stories with soundtracks