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After dark months of gloom and depression, when the sun rises again in your heart only a bacchanal will do.
A song about emerging from the darkness of a lengthy depression which is a feeling so euphoric as to almost induce its bi-polar opposite. Couched in a pastiche of a happy-clappy folksong in the hope off effecting a bacchanalian feel. The last verse is an attempt to write something very Dionysian in effect. The outro is just another piece to add to the mounting pile of evidence that I don’t know how or when to finish a song.
This is a songs from my strumming and flat-picking days and when I mislaid my last plectrum, many songs (including Hootenanny), became unavailable to me. From time to time, I wondered if it would be possible to fingerpick a strum but only tried it when one time I was inebriated enough to think perhaps the idea had legs. Two busted nails and a hangover later, a few songs did emerge happily having made the transition. This is one.
Hootenanny
I woke up this morning beneath my bedclothes
I had a suspicion that the sun had rose
The sky was blue, the earth was bright
Sure am glad to see the back of that night
Oh, listen young man
To see the gathering of the clans
Oh, clap your hands
Send a hootenanny all over this land
I couldn’t believe it so I checked once more
It was big bright and yellow, but I still wasn’t sure
It seems such a long time, do you know what I mean?
Where have you been hiding? Where have you been?
Daylight was poking through a hole in the sky
Oh, and it poked me right in the eye
There are fifty young maidens out on the hill
Bring us some wine for our bellies to fill
Play on the pipes, dance a quadrille
Then go hunting on the mountain for some rabbits to kill
© 2008 Dave Keir
