It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Trucks In The Sky!

Sorry to everyone who's had trouble getting here. It took me a while to find the proper link. Couldna done it on my own - I have my son Matt to thank for the breakthrough. Matthew Joseph Payne is a brilliant musician and songwriter who is full of surprises, always ahead of the game and not afraid to take the musical road led travelled.  I'd say I taught him everything he knows if I had, but I didn't. Go here and you'll see what I mean: matthewjosephpayne.bandcamp.com

Before we get started I want to remind you that starting at the beginning of this here blog thing will give you a better idea of the way everything rolls out.. But, as someone once sang, "Do what you like". I forget who, but it was certainly said...I mean, sung.

                     SHE'S WORKING NIGHTS NOW

Now after we've gone from multi-layered peppy pop to stripped-down but still studio-bound and carefully overdubbed acoustic quasi-folk, we head down to the coffee shop for a live-in-the-studio take of "Trucks In The Sky" (one of the few songs in my catalog that has actually earned decent money - not that I do this for the money! I'm just sayin'). It's funny how, despite the time and effort I spent lavishing many of the Won Out songs with multi-tracking, studio effects and (however dime-store) Beatle-esque flourishes, it's the ones that were basically dashed off live in one take using the simplest of instrumentation that have been the most popular.

After the soul-crushing theft of our instruments and gear, we moved from our beautiful but not terribly secure garden cottage in the Oakland hills to a squat, ugly and anonymous bunker of a home with bars on the windows and security gates on the doors. We used the insurance money (some advice to all of you fellow musicians from a guy who knows - insure your stuff!) to acquire a Martin acoustic -my first - and a portable-for-its-time Wurlitzer electric piano. "Trucks In The Sky" is the first evidence on the album of our new arsenal. In the summer of 1977 we recorded the present song along with 9 or 10 others in the living room of our new, impenetrable fortress. It was a productive session - one or two more of the songs made it to the album.  

I'm not a perfectionist (like Paul) who meticulously goes over every word and aspect of the performance, re-doing something until the right notes are played the right way.  For me, the feel a performance is equally if not more important as whether or not we got it 100% right (like John). 

...and here they are again!



I'm really a mess now
She made me that way
Sometimes I'm so high and then I'm so down
Should I take the next exit or get out of town
I'm feeling so bad
But she's working nights now and I'm working days
I don't get to see her but what can I say?
And I had a vision that the harbor was dry
And the ships were all flying like trucks in the sky

I'm feeling so helpless
Well, what if she knows?
Would she understand me if I came out and said
That I really love her? Or would she just shake her head
And say I'm a fool?
But she's working nights now and I'm working days
I don't get to see her but what can I say?
And I had a vision that the harbor was dry
And the ships were all fling like trucks in the sky

(short and sweet piano solo)

I'm watching a newsreel
That's shown through a wall
I smoke and that's dangerous, I drink and that's rough
I'm not Rumpelstiltskin but I still know my stuff
And I'm still a fool
But she's working nights now and I've got the blues
Butterflies in my stomach and rocks in my shoes
Oh, if I could just see her without straining my eyes
When the stars are like headlights of the trucks in the sky


I consider Trucks In The Sky my first good song. Not perfect, but good - something you'd want to listen to more than a few times. What there is of a melody is nice and catchy, it's got a hook and the lyrics are clever in spots. I still enjoy playing it and people still like to hear it. Even Allison (Mrs. Grinstead) likes it and she doesn't enjoy most music (Nilsson, Motown, Stax, Lowell George and that's it. Estimable company to find one or two of my songs in,). The lyrics are the first draft except for the "still know my stuff" line in the third verse that replaced the original rhyme "still pretty tough". Greg Reznick came up with that, but not until after the song was recorded with the original line. We made a couple of attempts to multi-track it in a couple of studios, adding more vocals and instruments, but couldn't recapture the feeling of that first pass. Considering when it was written (1975) and what was happening in my life at the time I'd guess that the lyrics are about Matt's mom. (Referring to Matthew Joseph Payne, mentioned earlier in this...blog)

It quickly became uncomfortable living in what looked and felt like a jail, so soon enough we "(got) out of town" and decamped to an airy little second-floor apartment in the "Family Compound" of which more will be said later.

I'm still pretty tough AND I still know my stuff


IGLOO!


Speaking of stuff, here's more: I used to run on the fire trails in the Oakland Hills. It kept me in shape and it was nice to get off city streets for a while and hobnob with the deer, racoons, skunks and squirrels that lived in the wilderness up there. I remember one time jogging along deep in the park late one afternoon and encountering a guy going the other way. He looked a little out of place wearing street clothes and an overcoat on a sunny day, walking purposefully down a fire trail in the woods. As we approached each other he stopped and scrutinized me. I felt a little uncomfortable but shrugged it off and kept going. As I passed him (he hadn't moved) I nodded as you do when encountering someone on the trail and he scowled at me so darkly that I felt a adrenaline shoot through my body. I continued on my way, listening to hear if he was following me. He was bigger and broader but I knew I could outrun him. I remember wondering if he was armed. Glancing over my shoulder I saw that he had moved to the middle of the trail and was standing there, hands in his overcoat pockets, scowling away. Not knowing what else to do, I gave him a friendly wave and was surprised when he slowly waved back, the scowl never leaving his face. At that moment the trail curved, taking me out of Scowly's sight. I increased my pace and took the shortest way to the parking lot.  The encounter rattled me so much that I never ran the fire trails alone again

The movie ended up bearing little resemblance to the encounter that inspired it

postscript:   I'm still performing "Trucks In The Sky". A few months ago my little vocal trio The Threetles (me, John Rafferty and Carol Zingeser) performed it at the Monkey House in Berkeley. In fact we started the set with it. Yeah, it's that good. Fun to play, too!