A great little tune written by my father, Howard Holmes, many moons ago. Brought to snappy fruition by my long-time friend, Wade Mathias, and sung by me.
My Dad, Howard Holmes, sang this song to me in the car as we traveled from ORF to NC at Christmas in 1998, telling me it might work on one of my RLC albums, which he had contributed to since the 4th one. Two weeks later, he didn't know when he was. He had recently been diagnosed with bone cancer, and it ultimately contributed to his passing in May of '99. That year, when I was caring for him for a month and just before the passed (he thought I was Hank Williams for a time, but finally came around to accepting me as his son), I showed him the words to the song and asked him to sign the paper for me. He seemed surprised that I knew and had written down a song he'd (to him) just recently written. He had regressed in his mind to about 1958 and stayed there. My memory of the tune and the words fortunately stuck with me. The actual musical structure of the song eluded me, as my brain doesn't hear much in the way of pitch or song structure (as the oddity of some of my tunes makes plain). I mentioned this song to Wade, as we'd been working on "God Rest Ye" for some time, and he said he'd see if he could build a framework it. I believe he hit the mark!
Hmm... hang on a sec. Actually what Wade said was "Whatever I can do to help you realize this I will do." Let me pause here to give Wade some big props for his work and devotion to his contributions to this year's album; above and beyond don't come close. We bounced emails and tracks back and forth, tweaking, suggesting, and generally working together towards something I had in my head. Wade was able to find that place and make me sit up straight, and we got this version of the song you now have.
I'm sure my Dad would dig it.
Notes from the "RLC 11" website:
http://silvertoneworld.net/rlc11/