Meyer & McGuire
Songwriter Notes
Song
of the Month #13 - “Sometimes You’ve Got To Do What You Can”
(Track #7 on the Home
Town CD)
Lyrics: If you want to listen to this song while you read, go to the following link: http://free.napster.com/view/artist/index.html?id=12355208. Click on "Sometimes You’ve Got To Do What You Can." You can listen to it for free (not available outside the USA).
Along
with playing music on the weekends, I taught high school English for thirty-two
years. So, I have a fairly good
understanding of what it is like to work a day job. With few exceptions, most people who work day
jobs respond similarly to certain words or phrases. For example, Sunday night and Monday morning
have a tendency to generate a somewhat undesirable disposition, while
Thanksgiving, Christmas, vacation, and Friday quite easily bring out that
congenial nature that most of us prefer.
Friday is, and has always been, one of my favorite
words. Throughout my years of teaching,
I always enjoyed the energy that pervaded the high school halls and classrooms
on this day. With the weekend just
around the bend, it was very difficult to keep my students on task. In fact, it was difficult to keep me on task,
too. Knowing I kept a guitar in the
closet, the kids made it very clear that my music would make them much better
citizens. They reinforced their position
by telling me that understanding the difference between a participle and a
gerund would only lead to a boring successful life. On many occasions I did give in to their
wishes, and I now apologize for the part I played in contributing to the
decline of western civilization.
When the school day ended and the high school halls finally
cleared out on Friday afternoon, the fun usually continued with my colleagues. Inevitably someone would suggest we meet for
a venting session in a place where alcohol could help us air our feelings much
more easily. These gatherings varied in size
and location. The group could number
anywhere from two to twenty, and the setting was either at some teacher’s house
or one of the local watering holes.
Although many years have slipped away since then, I still have fond
memories of these get-togethers and a deep love and admiration for the people
who were involved in them.
One Friday afternoon sometime in the late ‘70s or early
‘80s, Robb Sloan, my good friend and colleague, suggested that he and I go to
The Farmers’ Inn, a little tavern located on one of the side streets in
downtown Canandaigua. Robb and I are
different in many ways, but the common threads that have sustained our close
friendship for nearly thirty-five years are we are far from the main stream
when it comes to being a teacher, and we always enjoy new and different
experiences. So, Robb and I went to the
Farmers’ by ourselves because it is not a typical “happy hour” place where a
majority of teachers would be comfortable.
As I sat at the bar in The Farmers’, Robb introduced me to
many of his friends, and they reminded me of Mac and the boys, a cast of eccentric
characters from Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. A few of these guys lived at Heartbreak
Hotel, a rooming house next to The Farmers’.
It was very similar to The Palace Flophouse and Grill, the place where
Mac and the boys lived. Can you tell I
love Steinbeck? Well, I felt just like
Doc, the main character in both books, as I sat and listened to the patrons
share their hilarious tales. For me, the
scene couldn’t get any better! Sipping a
cold beer on a Friday afternoon or evening and listening to people tell me
their stories are two things I absolutely live for! At some point in the evening, “Sometimes
You’ve Got To Do What You Can” made its move on me.
I don’t know why the lyrics came to
me in this setting. I’d been in many
places like The Farmers’ before, and I’d spent many evenings with similar
patrons. I guess the song was just ready
to come out. It merely depicts the
sights and sounds of a local neighborhood bar on a Friday night. It generates the energy that emerges from
people talking, laughing, shouting, venting, playing games, watching sports on
TV, and eating bar food. The song’s tone
induces the feeling people crave after a long hard week of work. Realizing the feeling can only be temporary,
the narrator identifies in the last verse the strategy usually adopted by most
people. They work hard all week long in
order to return to their little oasis at the end of the week.
“Sometimes You’ve Got To Do What You
Can” is pure Americana. It is an upbeat
bluegrass-like country song that gets your toes tapping and hands
clapping. With a guitar, banjo, fiddle,
bass, and great harmonies John and Joe Dady back me up with some exhilarating
guitar and banjo picking. The fiddle
playing is right up there with the guitar and banjo, and it is equally
outstanding. It’s that kind of song that
compels you to crank it up when you are driving in your car. When you hear it, it makes you want to call
your friends and invite them out to your local tavern to shoot the breeze and
drink a few cold ones. While not coming
close to something like Jonathan Edward’s classic “Shanty,” it evokes the same
feeling. Hope you have time to check it
out! I like it, and I hope you do, too.
I dedicated this song to the members
of the "Friday Afternoon Choir."
The group got its name from the phrase “Choir practice.” This term emerged as the code my friends and
I developed to dissemble the nature of our Friday afternoon gatherings. Here’s how it worked. When one of my colleagues was interested in
getting together at a local pub on a Friday afternoon, he would never overtly
state this in the high school halls or classrooms. Instead, he would ask if anyone was
interested in a “choir practice.”
Everyone, including the kids, either smiled or chuckled at this phrase. Over the years, I have been asked to join
several church and community choirs. I
have always declined. Once you have been
with the best, there is no going back!
I
recorded this song in 1993 at The Garage, a little studio in Rochester, New
York. The Garage, as I have told you
before, is owned and operated by John and Joe Dady, two quintessential
musicians. When you record with them,
you can always count on great coffee, good stories, and an aching stomach from
laughing. I highly recommend John and
Joe if you are interested in recording.
Also, The Dady Brothers, John and Joe’s group, have many recordings of
their own, and they tour the United States and Ireland. Check them out on the web at www.dadybros.com.
Well,
there you have it. I’ll have another
song of the month for you next month. If
you have any comments or suggestions, please pass them on to me. This is a work in progress, and I am always
looking for new ways to improve it.
(E-Mailed 4/18/07)
E-mail us at McRiley@Frontiernet.net