Waltzing With Werewolves

This week's Great Hites episode includes the biggest number of stories to date, with a number of new authors joining in and existing authors pulling out all the stops to make this a really good stepping-on point if you've never visited the site before.

The prompt for the stories was "Silver Bullets; the real reason that some cowboys carried them" and as you can imagine this has resulted in a number of werewolf-westerns as well as a few more unusual approaches. There are 12 stories in total, so Jeff has split it into 4 chunks, but it is all well worth a listen or two.

Two of the stories are mine: "Waltzing with Werewolves" is a 100 word love story set to music in a sort of spoken-song format, whilst "Silver Solves The Dilemma" is a fairly traditional western tale, but with werewolves and a somewhat skewed moral code.

Incidentally, the introduction music for each part that Jeff talks over is the theremin solo from The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams - the country song I wrote some time ago for the Masters of Song Fu. Follow the link for the whole song.

Over on 'Some Other Scotland' this week, the action heads over the Atlantic to New York where the final scene shows how the influence of the story is reaching far beyond the shores of Scotland, with some devastating consequences. I was delighted to have Philip 'NorvalJoe' Carroll join me as the guest voice for Razer's American friend Kyle, who provides him with a place to lay low for a while. The two of us also concocted the creepy promo for Great Hites that you'll hear in the same episode, which was fun to put together.

Live Interview and Chat

Finally, I have been invited to do a live interview and call-in chat with Podioracket.com on BlogTalkRadio on the 10th of August. I will have more information about this shortly, but in the meantime, visit this link to set an email reminder of when the show will be broadcast.

Masters of Song Fu - Update #8 - The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams

Your task is to write a country ballad - using a backstory of your own creation – called "The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams".

Here's the song for Round 3 of the Song Fu challenge (you know, the one I was knocked out of at round 1):-

Click here for the song

For some background to the song and the additional challenge I set myself, see this post. It does include all the items I mentioned, including a wobbly theremin-pretending-to-be-a-pedal-steel-guitar solo. Having now listened to the other challengers I realise that there was no yodelling, but I don't know that would sit very well in a ballad, plus it was not in my original list, so too bad.

Here are the lyrics and chords (non-Scottish readers - minor translations included - move your mouse over a word you don't understand):-

[verse1]
  G        G           C               G
I left the farm in the morning, around 6
G       G             D       D
Fed the cattle on the way
G                G         C          G
Headed South for Dallas to pick up my girl
G                  G         D        D 
And that's when my life went astray.

[verse2 - same chords as v1 except last line]
She was waitressin' in the Korean restaurant
Noodles on poodles she'd serve
When a truck, red 'n' green, with the name of Christine
    G              D          G         G
Too fast round the corner did swerve

[verse3]
Gm                 Gm      Cm        Cm
What happened just then, I fail to recall
       Gm       Gm           Dsus4    D7
But my world it descended to Hell
          Gm         Gm          Cm     Cm
There was kimchi and shitzhu and bodily parts in
    Gm         Gm              Dsus4    D7
The rubble and dust where they fell

[verse4 - same chords as v3 except last line]
I grabbed the truck driver and gave him a kickin'
For killin' my sweetheart so swell
But she wasn't dead - she'd just banged her head
Gm          D7          Gm         G
And I spent time in the Bar-L


[chorus]
G                        C
I'm known around here as Amos Adams
G                     D
Sometimes as Rufus or Hank
       G                   C
I'd consider it lucky if I lived in Kentucky
  G                  D
Instead of a village just West of Buckie
          G                    C
Where the trains are sporadic, money is tight
  G                       D
A bottle of Talisker gets you through the night
  G                   C
I wish to God that my Mama, that sod,
    G        D              G         G
Had named me something like Shug.

[verse5 - same as v2]
Let out of prison this Christmas just past
I hoped for a change in my luck
When I got home she wrote, on a tiny wee note
"I've left with the man and his truck"

[instrumental verse - same as v2]

[verse6 - same as v2]
Now I'm only a jakey from a wee Scottish town
But my life's like a Johnny Cash song
My name isn't Sue, but Rufus will do
I guess Nashville is where I belong

~Chorus~
... Had named me something like Tam.
... or named me something like Doug
... or even something like Shug

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Tags: Song Fu, Country, chords

Masters of Song Fu - Update #7

Your task is to write a country ballad - using a backstory of your own creation – called "The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams".

The song is now written, having walked around all week with a list of the requirements in my pocket and no idea how to get them all together. The answers came once I had the story behind the ballad, and the various items then all slotted into place fairly well.

It's the story of a Scottish lad with a country and western name and the trouble that follows because of it - it sits somewhere between 'A Boy Named Sue' and Billy Connolly's version of 'Tell Laura I Love Her'. It features ALL the subjects required for the 'perfect' country song as well as a little reference to 'Stobby'. I'll post the lyrics when the recording is complete, probably tomorrow night.

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Tags: Song Fu, Country, A Boy Named Sue, Tell Laura I Love Her, Stobby, Billy Connolly

Masters of Song Fu - Update #6

The third challenge is up and ready to begin. They're down to just two Masters and two Challengers now, with the final round approaching soon. The latest challenge is a bit of a stinker:-

Your task is to write a country ballad - using a backstory of your own creation – called "The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams".

To me this is a bit of a wide-open challenge - really the song could be about anything so long as Rufus is mentioned somewhere. Time for some self-imposed restrictions to get the brain something to grab onto, but what should they be? Country is not a musical genre I'm particularly familiar with beyond the 'classics', and have almost no experience writing anything in that vein. The possible exceptions to that being 'The Middle Eastern Western', which was just a country backing to some Gulf War (v1) and old cowboy film samples, and more recently 'Stobby', which has a bit of a country-rock sound to it in places.

So, what makes a good country song? 10 seconds googling gives us a list for the attributes required for the 'perfect' country song. They are as follows:-

1. Clever lyrics (a pun, a joke, or a play on words, preferably in the title of the song)
2. Regret
3. A stalwart, but flawed, protagonist
4. A pedal steel guitar
5. Alcohol (of course)
6. Reverence for the land, especially the South

Steve Goodman and John Prine also suggest:-

1. Mama
2. Trains
3. Trucks
4. Prison
5. Gettin' drunk
6. Farms
7. Dead dogs
8. Christmas

Arguments about lists like this could rage for decades, but it seem like a good start based on the country songs I'm familiar with, so here's my additional challenge:-

Include at least 10 of the subjects required for a perfect country song from the supplied list.

Of course, I will try to get them all in the song, but that might be just too much to ask!

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Tags: Song Fu, Country, John Prine, Steve Goodman, ballad