| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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That's the dichotomy of the song. An "us", and the world-at-large represented by San Jose.
-And it sounds so good to sing.
"Down in San Jose they say, ' Oh . . ."
It's such a lovely line.
That's how a good song is made:
the syllables work. . .
Yes: that's what I wanted: how you come to your songs, your criteria? BILL: The songs usually come as a phrase like that-a phrase that sings, that sounds good to sing, and that everybody can sing. And that the syllables sound good. And then, I'll throw it away if it means nothing to me and never think of it again. But if it |
brings up a theme that I want to sing about, then I'll stick with it and fill it out. 'Killer Weed' is a folk song, really. It's an old-fashioned folk song. It's purely local. It mentions all the places around here where there are growers by ridgetop - and I don't have to be factual. The song gets real fantastic. The lumber industry has its Paul Bunyuns. This song has its character One-Eyed Jim, whose plane went down near Ukiah one night and we thought we'd seen the last of him but he walked away intact except for his one eye in the mud and everyone around here says, "Ole Jim sure can grow a bud." In some later verse, I'm driving my pick-up down 128 and there's a landslide and he comes riding down on his crop and lands in my pick-up truck and I see his one good eye in my rearview mirror. It's just silliness - but |