She stands in her kitchen in Texas, getting ready to cook
some supper, having earlier opened an e-mail from her friend in California
which contains an MP3 attachment of his latest banjo tune. Musically, this one rollicks an ascending
scale, then tumbles back down the line
of notes, suggesting a phrase. It might announce a chorus. What comes up for her is a tickling refrain: “Whoo hoo.
Ba-by”.
As she leans against the counter and listens some more, she
hears in her own “Whoo Hoo” the sound of
a train whistle and figures this could be a song about a train. And then, (in the way I recognize a song
writer might go about catching her song), she remembers an old story from long
ago about a baby being thrown off a train in a suitcase.
She finds the story of the Iron
Mountain Baby. In the true story, an old Civil War vet walking along Big River,
under the trestle of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, Southern railway, discovers a
suitcase with a crying, bruised baby inside, and takes the infant home to his
wife. The valise with a baby inside of
it had presumably been tossed from the train passing overhead a short while
before.
As luck would have
it, in the true life story of the Iron Mountain Baby, the baby lives, and is
adopted and loved by the elderly couple.
Read the story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Mountain_Baby
As luck would have it for the songwriter, the real-life wife
of the man who finds the baby is named Sarah Jane.
Sarah Jane. Rhymes
with train.
A song is born.
There is a folk ballad written at the turn of the 20th
century about the Iron Mountain Baby, but today’s songwriter took a fresh shot
at it and so wrote Sarah Jane and the
Iron Mountain Baby lyrics here:
This whole musing arises today from my having caught a few minutes of a PBS
concert featuring the multi-talented Steve Martin in his role as Grammy-winning
bluegrass banjo picker, and his collaborator, the songwriter Edie
Brickell. Their collaborative project
(2013 “Love Has Come For You”) has met with rave reviews and, if you listen to
it, you might agree.
The story behind The Iron Mountain Baby song is,
in my otherwise pretty boring life, something I get excited about. For many a songwriter, the images and words
that come forward spring from the music itself.
The thrumming, ascending, descending melodic lines suggest something…a
whiff of an image, a picture: passing train, a baby. This then can trigger a memory or another
association that feels true and compelling.
By following the bread crumbs, the whistling call of “Whoo-hoo?”…
Edie Brickell wrote a mouthful of words that tells a wild story of baby rescue, yes…but also of a woman’s
fierce protection of her foundling child.
The gift of this little story for me is the reminder that
any act of creativity starts with whisper sometimes…a tap on the shoulder. “Whoo-hoo?”.
“Whoo-hoo?” I ask
myself. I ask you. What whispers do you
follow and what do you let waft on by each day in your search for your song?
I know I’m listening in a little more closely today to all
the melodies whirling by. Mindful of
paying attention also to the pictures they evoke . I make a note to myself to follow the
breadcrumbs or hop that train to the story, the song , or the poem that lies
just around the bend in the tracks.
Listen to Edie Brickell and Steve Martin: Sarah Jane and the Iron Mountain Baby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53IR6nYqTU0
BLR for the Poplar Grove Muse
Thanks so much for the look into a song writer's process, Beth. This was a lovely piece and I enjoyed learning a little about what is a mysterious proceess to me.
ReplyDeleteLove this stream-of-idea depiction of creative processes.... Song lyrics is such a great, and relatively untapped, repository of creativity and collaboration, sometimes between parties that don't even know they play a part. MKP
ReplyDelete