Spiritwood
by Gord Sellar
Wake up before dawn, and with any luck
Out on the highway, we’re the only truck,
Dust in tail-lights,
We drive on through the night,
Never see a light…
But you know, it’s alright…
And as the sun comes up, we finally stop,
To get some coffee in a truck stop,
The people sound strange here,
Smell of savoured beer,
Smile and call you “dear.”
Look up high, at the geese up in the sky,
They are winging their way homeward.
Here we are, and we’ve come so very far,
I’m sure that we’ll make Spiritwood by dawn.
They speak with words that make no sense to you,
And we begin to talk just like we used to do,
Don’t want to go,
I tell you ’bout the snow
But I guess you’ll never know…
Look up high, at the geese up in the sky,
They are winging their way homeward.
Here we are, and we’ve come so very far,
I’m sure that we’ll make Spiritwood by dawn.
This place I’m from that you will never see,
This place I want to take you, there with me
We’d drive until the end
of night, and maybe then,
we’d go back home again.
Look up high, at the geese up in the sky,
They are winging their way homeward.
Here we are, and we’ve come so very far,
I’m sure that we’ll make Spiritwood by dawn.
Despite my dislike of a lot of country music, this is a sort of folksy-country-ish song I wrote for Dabang Band. Probably it was the influence of Yo La Tengo’s Ride the Tiger that got this kind of sound in my head — I vaguely remember album sounding a little country-tinged to me, something about the guitar-picking and the very simple drumming on a lot of songs, but also the singing; the album implanted a very earnest melody and a tumbling brush-snare drumbeat in my mind, and I dug out a poem that fit the meter of the tune, and which I just knew would work.
Alas, nobody heard it but me: the song never ended up in our repertory. I had a lot of trouble communicating the bouncy country feel of the tune, and in the run-through it sounded more like some kind of love-song ballad thing, which was exactly NOT what it was supposed to sound like… but it was too late, by that point, and the song ended up in the dustbin. The tune is still clear in my head, though.
January 31, 2012