At a Thursday evening concert at OOAK, i told my friend David that i had written a very dark song (perhaps a “blacks”). His advice was that i should now write a happy song to counteract its effect. I thought about that for a while, and then made a short list of three things that make me feel good as the basis of the chorus of such a song. These three things were “hugging a tree”, “petting a cat”, and “rain”. (I’m not sure about the order of the first two.) When i wrote the chorus, i expanded “rain” to “dance in the rain” — that seemed more active than “listen to the rain” or “smell the rain”.
Anyway, i wrote the chorus, which you can see in the Lyrics link below, since i’ve made almost no change to what i originally wrote for it. I then worked out a chord sequence and melody for it that satisfied me. I chose the key of D because my voice seems to be moving there from C, and to avoid writing yet another song in C.
With chorus written, i figured that i needed about four verses, so i thought about a list of maladies to be ameliorated by the actions suggested in the chorus. I was influenced by some of the stereotypical country music maladies — wife leaving, dog dying, etc. — but decided to add a quirk or two. I immediately decided to have the wife leave for another woman rather than another man. Also, since i already had cats in the chorus, i didn’t want to put a dog in the verses, so i replaced it with a truck. Beer and football disappointments formed the basis for the other two verses. My friend Bruce Koran suggested a change in the second line (wife turning tricks) of the third verse. That resulted in a minor change in the first verse as well as several changes in the third verse, and has resulted in a significantly better song.
I sang the beta version of the song, which i had written in a few hours, at the Saturday jam. The last line of each verse was the same in that initial version, though i was fairly sure that i would write new last lines for each verse, which i proceeded to do within a few days.
After singing it a while, i decided to include an alternative chorus that can be mixed and matched with the original chorus. When i sing the song, that chorus is sung last, usually after a statement to the effect that i wrote it because some people don’t like cats, some people would rather cut down trees than hug them, and some people just don’t believe in dancing.
The final result can be seen by following the Lyrics link below, and you can get the melody from my usual mediocre performance found through the Audio link.