Category: Live

In honor of my birthday*: a song about getting older and slower.

The song is something of a musical pun. One of the standard song forms in jazz is “Rhythm Changes.” This form uses the chords from Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm” as a starting point, then builds new melodies on top of this basic harmonic structure. Charlie Parker was especially famous for this form of musical contrafact, with rhythm change songs such as “Anthropology,” “Dexterity,” and “Moose the Mooche.”

As I’ve learned various rhythm changes songs, I find myself wondering, “Why are these so dang fast? I’m too old for this!” Thus was born the idea of a lethargic rhythm change song suitable for jazz musicians who are getting old and slow. Indeed, the lyrical theme is also about getting older and slower–and being content as these slow changes occur.

Though the song is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the lyrics touch on deeper issues of the life cycle and were inspired in part by Joan Chittister’s book, The Gif of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.

_{*October 5. Gifts will be accepted annually throughout the entire month of October.}

It’s not often that I pen something happy. I mean, just happy, with no twinges of melancholy, conflict, or nostalgia. I’m a content person, generally, but enough of a realist to understand that light needs shadow to have any meaning at all. But just this once I made an exception and wrote something that is all joy, beginning to end. To all you disappointed pessimists who follow my music: I’m sorry. It just came out that way!

The song started as a little bass riff I made up while testing out some new strings. Like most of my music, it started as a seed and grew into something quite different. Not to nerd out on you, but the fundamental problem I was having was that the original melody mirrored the bass line, creating parallel octaves and a king of hokey opening melody. I woke up one day with this new opening melody in my head and all the pieces fell together. Now the song starts with a melody that takes off like a rocket, leaping an octave and a 6th in two measures.

Because the song has a jazz gospel feel, I named it “The Gospel Truth” as soon as I began working on it. It turns out there are lots and lots of “Gospel Truths” out there: songs, books, bands, CD collections, concert series, preacher podcasts, etc. Oh well, I guess if this song gets popular, they’ll have to call it “The Gospel Truth According to Greg Scheer.”

It should be noted that the violinist, Susan Mora, promised me she wouldn’t talk during the recording. And yet, a minute and mere minute and nine seconds after making that promise, she leaned over and said, “It’s very happy!” What would my Euro Bistro recordings be without Susan’s commentary?

I continue playing my bass each week with a jazz trio at a local restaurant and I continue to write new songs for said trio. I try to do something different each time: a different style, mood, or tempo. Sometimes I base a new song on an existing standard: Brubeck’s “Take 5” becomes my “Take 3.0” or Jobim’s “One Note Samba” becomes “The One More Note Samba,” for example. I figure my songs will be more likely to be played if I can slip them in beside a similar classic.

But his time I actually stole from myself. I was thinking about how my rap song “We Know the Changes,” would make a mighty fine jazz-funk groove. I began playing with some melodies that might work on top of the chords from that song (called a “contrafact” in musical terms), but it soon morphed into an entirely different thing.

“Everybody Knows” ended up as an A minor groove that pivots up and down a step on phrase two and four. That’s a cool way to keep things simple without getting boring. As you can hear from this recording from last night, the trio took to it like fish to water.

I probably won’t use the words with this one, but I include them here for posterity:

1. Everybody knows
and there’s no denying.
Everybody knows
And you know it, too.
Everybody knows
try to hide it, but it shows.
Everybody knows, everybody knows
when they fall in love.

2. Everybody knows
they can’t fight the feeling.
Everybody knows
it’ll only grow.
Everybody knows
just give in and let it flow.
Everybody knows, everybody knows
when they fall in love.

“Iguana” began its life as a bass line. I wanted to write a groove-oriented jazz tune like Herbie Hancock’s iconic “Chameleon.” (“Chameleon”…”Iguana” Get it?) The bass line soon morphed from a dirty funk into a smoother, jazz fusion groove with an ever-ascending harmonic sequence. While I was working on the melody I was also memorizing Thelonius Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser.” I was fascinated (and a little bit infuriated) by the way Monk takes one melodic motif and then shifts it to different positions in the meter each time it appears. A little of that leaked into “Iguana.”

The final test for any jazz tune–especially a groove-oriented one–is how well it works with real musicians soloing over its form. The first version of Iguana unraveled in that setting. The form was AABA, but the final A was so similar to the first two that no one ever knew when the song started again! In this final version, I simplified the form to AAB with a clear cadence marking the way back to the beginning. Voila! It worked like a charm.

I have a confession to make: I hate Christmas music. There. I’ve said it.

I don’t know if this hatred grew because I’m a liturgically-leaning worship director who dislikes the way the Season of Walmart displaces the Season of Advent. Or the sickly sentimentality of most popular Christmas music. Or the soundtrack of Yuletide dittes that accompanies the binge/purge cycle of consumerism that begins as quickly as the Halloween decorations are put away. Who knows? But I’m not a fan.

You can imagine my dismay as the last three weeks of my jazz gig turned exclusively to Christmas repertoire. Yikes. But I’m a good sport and have played along. This week, however, I was overcome by a strange desire to compose a Christmas song of my own. What?! It’s true. I sat down at the piano and an hour later there was “One More Christmas Song.”

My goal was to write a song that could sit comfortably next to all the other standards we would be playing. Indeed, I borrowed liberally from existing songs. You’ll hear echoes of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “The Christmas Song,” and “Jingle Bells.” Not bad for a 16 measure song!

Do we need one more Christmas song?
Do we all need to sing along?
We need tidings of good cheer
that will last throughout the rest of the year.
It would be so glorious
to sing of peace on earth
and bring a message of good will
to all whether near or far.
Yes, we do need one more Christmas song!

This jazz tune was a long time in the making. It started its life as the 4 bar phrase that begins the song. I developed it into a full song and named it “Sprite Lee” because it was (wait for it…) sprightly. With time, however, it grew more and more complex, with shifts in and out of the key and weird phrases of uneven length, rendering it virtually indecipherable.

When I get lost in the musical weeds, I always think of Occam’s razor, which can be paraphrased as, “the simplest explanation is usually the best one.” In music, I take that to mean, “cut away the frills and doodads and get to the point.”

And that’s just what I did. I soon had hacked it down to a simple AABBA form that is delightfully tuneful and memorable. Since it was now an entirely different song than the previous version, I needed a new title, too. I chose: “Simple Lee (The man who shaved with Occam’s razor).”

_{Note: The trio was sight-reading this, so you’ll hear B naturals (instead of B flats) in the first time through the head.}