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Except for “Trouble Back in ‘05,” I write fiction. I don’t write about my feelings or relationships. Just fiction. A lot of my music is unashamedly a vehicle for my interest in an instrument or a style of playing. On the more up-tempo material the riff usually comes first. As often as not, the chord structure suggests a melody suggests a lyric. If I only wrote using a guitar I would have far fewer songs than the four-albums-plus worth of material waiting. For example, a mandola, though tuned in fifths, pulls different music out of me than a mandolin, which is tuned in fifths at different pitches. Every instrument seems to open new paths. The following are a few thoughts on the songs on the first Nite Cafe album.
1. LET’S GO HAVE A TIME: This song grew from the mandolin riff at the beginning. I originally did it in the key of ‘G,’ but it was really a little high for my voice. When I bought a metal National resonator mandolin I saw an idea on the internet claiming these instruments sound good when tuned down a step and a half, making the ‘G’ chord position play an ‘E’ chord. A much better key for me to sing this particular song and I had already been tuning my metal National resonator guitar to open ‘E’.
Denny Hall: slide guitar, mandolin, bass, drums, vocal
Judy Wayenberg and Dan Wilson: harmony vocals
Play Sample:
2. MORPHINE: This one is a period piece in theme if not in style. Morphine, though still medically viable, doesn’t seem to be the drug of choice on the streets anymore, so I thought I might be able to use it as a trouble-and-strife focus for some of my seedy characters. No offense to any of you morphine addicts who aren’t the least bit seedy.
3. TROUBLE BACK IN ‘05: It’s hard to write a protest song and have it come out like it should be a song with it’s own musical merit. To make your point within the limits of a given poetic meter is a challenge. Sometimes your most important message has too many of those pesky syllables. I’ve never had good luck writing message songs that I felt musically satisfied with, so I thought about another approach. Since the songs I’m currently trying to put across are not contemporary in feel and the instruments I use are almost all antiques, why not try an old style of song like those from the twenties and thirties? This song is what I got. I think of it as having a Salvation Army band rhythm section.
4. CELEBRATED RED DRESS: I didn’t know her. I knew someone who could have been her. This story intrigued me enough that I am well into writing a novel about her. A street person with a colorful air of elegance.
Denny Hall: mandolin, slide guitar, bass, drums, lead and harmony vocals
Judy Wayenberg: button accordian, harmony vocals
Dan Wilson: harmony vocals
Play Sample:
5. TALKIN’ ‘BOUT YOU: I started the riff and Billy Blue made up most of the song on the spot. I added a last verse and slightly altered the four-chord bridges so I could sing them and play at the same time. Talk about fiction, this one doesn’t mean a damned thing. It is truly a vehicle for the instrument. Maybe less so when Bill did it. Maybe more so when I do.
6. SUPERSTITION: We visit another misfit who hangs out at the Nite Cafe. I like the occasional minor tune, and the voodoo rattles and rhythm section were fun to play.
7. THE NITE CAFE: This is the place where it all happened. The form of this song isn’t old at all, but hopefully the instrumentation makes it fit in. The people of the Nite Cafe are timeless.
8. HIDE AWAY: Another song grown out of a riff. I make no apologies. Who cares where fiction comes from? I kind of like songs that are minimal melodically if they have a beat I can stomp to. The feel of the chorus on this one is inspired by fifties R&B.
9. STEEL HIGHWAY: This song was written in the early seventies. I had the pleasure of hanging out with Lowell George just before the first Little Feat album was released. I got to hear the test pressing in advance of it’s appearance in the stores. Our Buffalo Nickel Jugband also played a concert at McArthur Park that the musicians organized as a free event. Little Feat and several other bands played. I was very impressed with Lowell’s song writing. Steel Highway was the first thing I came up with under his influence. I just wanted a lot of rhythm. I actually did write this before “Dixie Chicken” came out. So the southern-girl theme was parallel if not equal development.
10. HARD LUCK BLUES: I’m not having trouble with religion in this song--I’m having trouble with shyster TV preachers with their hands in the pockets of the poor and infirm. I’m having fun having trouble, though.
11. BILLY CAUGHT THE 10-9-0H: Oh no. Now right away I’ve run into a song that isn’t really fiction. I’m so damned sorry I lied, but here we are. The first album, “Nite Cafe,” is dedicated to my long-time music partner the late “Billy Blue,” a.k.a. Bill Graham. Bill had written a train song called “Ten Nine Oh”. He recorded it with his band The Nu-Vines on the album “Watermelon Time in the Nisqually Delta.” Bill lived in an historic old house near a railroad track. We talked almost daily by phone and I could clearly hear the train whistle when it sounded.Whatever the time of day, Bill would say, “There goes the ten-nine-oh, right on time.” Bill passed away. It seems like yesterday and it seems like10 years. There is a reference to playing all night with Blueport. This was Blueport News, a band Bill had in the seventies. WPLJ (white port lemon juice)was a great old R&B song we did as teenagers. Manning the lighthouse refers Bill’s song “No Light in the Lighthouse” (Nu-Vines album “Take to the Woods”). Hang tenor on “The Night Cafe”--nobody sang harmony on my songs like Billy Blue. I don’t know where he got the lines--there are only so many notes, you know.
12. MAMA WON’T LET YOU: The mandola started acting up in my hands one day and this song came out. In trying to figure out a way to do it live, Judy played button accordion and it came sounding pretty full for two people. It also gave a zydeco feel, which we went with by adding drums, washboard and bass.
