Joe and I have long been fans of the Country & Western genre. We love the reduction of the usual 7 notes per octave to five and also the emphasis on melody and narrative. And the instrumentation! This is our attempt to write a proper country & western song with proper lyrics. A country song about America.
I lived in America, on-and-off, for about 9 years, from 2003 (when I got divorced) until the end of 2012.
America was always very kind to me. She gave me employment and a chance to reinvent myself after the disappointment of my divorce.
Whilst living there, I became very interested in and somewhat informed about American history and politics. One of my best friends there is an African-American from New Orleans, Louisiana, and one of the brightest and well-read people I know. We don’t agree on everything…but I respect his opinion (for being so well informed) enormously.
The original words to this song were about the American Civil War, which – as probably the first modern war of the mechanised era (including photography) and conducted by a highly literate and conversant populace – has always exercised a particular fascination for me.
The original lyrics posited the question what might have happened to the topography of the 20th century, had the South won. I imagine that America got its confidence as a superpower from the Union’s victory. Had the south won, with the country divided, I imagine it would have been less cocksure on the world stage.
Subsequently, I jettisoned the original Civil War inspired lyrics to explore a further set of themes about America.
Firstly, the “promise” of America. If not the first, America was most famously the one country forged from an “idea” of the future. An idealised place. A place of possibility.
This idea has exercised a fascination not only upon Americans (who on both sides of the house frequently invoke the imagined intentions of the founding parties in fighting political debates!) but also upon immigrants, who have both stocked and shaped America ever since.
As a Brit / European, I also had some external perspectives to my US sojourn. I was appalled by the lack of universal healthcare (to me, the mark of a civilised society); by gun culture; the lobby movements; bipartisan politics; the conviction of the religious right; the anti-intellectual bias; the sheer emotion of politics. The very idea that someone might do something as audacious as change their mind (conviction) appeared an anathema.
This song is written from two possible perspectives:
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the perspective of an American (of whom there are many) who feel that the idea and ideal of America entertained by the Founding Fathers has been diluted, even betrayed, by what the country turned into
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the perspective of an immigrant “sold” on the idea of America, who laments the distance America may have travelled away from that intention. In that sense, this song is something of a lament.
The words came very quickly, one rainy evening in Tunbridge Wells...a good 3,500 miles away!
On a musical note, my friend Eric Roy and I went guitar shopping in LA one day and bought a National steel guitar, which I tuned down to the key of D. I play that guitar with a brass slide on this song. The first version was slow (90 BPM) which Joe felt (correctly) as a bit turgid; a subsequent re-write and recording, with a different melody, sped the track up to 130 BPM. Although it is a very simple few chord number, I am really pleased how it came out.
And all this to a five-chord country song!