6-1 Thank You Songs - Tod Pronto, Tret Fure, and Barry Louis Polisar

Have you ever wondered where songs come from? I have. I kind of wonder all the time. Sometimes songs spring into your head fully formed and ready to play. Other times songs seem to take forever. They may sit on the shelf or go through numerous rewrites before you get it right. It takes between minutes and years to write a song. 

 Inspiration is a fickle mistress. It’s very difficult for me to create on a schedule. Sometimes I feel in command of what the song is about. Other times I feel like the song is writing itself. Your brain needs time to work without you interfering. Sometimes the best thing to do is to take an afternoon off, or a day, or a week, or a month, or a year. Just to let your brain munge around in the background, while you get on with life.  Lately, I’ve felt like this and though it goes against all traditional podcasting wisdom. I needed some time off. I needed perspective. I needed to understand what’s really important in my life.

 I’m Tim Rose and welcome to Season 6 of the Tim Tunes Podcast. This is our fifty-fourth regular episode. 

 This episode I’ll be cleaning up a little left-over work from last season. We’re starting this season with songs that I wrote as a thank you to the last three interviewees from season five. We’ll listen to three new songs and follow the journey to writing each of them.

So, strap on your beanie, flip your propeller, and let’s get started! 

Transcript

[Intro]
[Intro Theme – Motor]

Have you ever wondered where songs come from? I have. I kind of wonder all the time. Sometimes songs spring into your head fully formed and ready to play. Other times songs seem to take forever. They may sit on the shelf or go through numerous rewrites before you get it right. It takes between minutes and years to write a song.

Inspiration is a fickle mistress. It’s very difficult for me to create on a schedule. Sometimes I feel in command of what the song is about. Other times I feel like the song is writing itself. Your brain needs time to work without you interfering. Sometimes the best thing to do is to take an afternoon off, or a day, or a week, or a month, or a year. Just to let your brain munge around in the background, while you get on with life.  Lately, I’ve felt like this and though it goes against all traditional podcasting wisdom. I needed some time off. I needed perspective. I needed to understand what’s really important in my life.

[Pod Lick]

Hi. I’m Tim Rose and welcome to Season 6 of the Tim Tunes Podcast. This is our fifty-fourth regular episode.

But before we go there, I’ll be cleaning up a little left-over work from last season. We’re starting this season with songs that I wrote as a thank you to the last three interviewees from season five. We’ll listen to three new songs and follow the journey to writing each of them.

So, strap on your beanie, flip your propeller, and let’s get started!

[Pod Lick – Big D]

[I’m Back]

Where have I been? Why has it been so long since my last podcast was released?

Well, there are several reasons. If you are a dedicated listener, then you may be aware that in November of 2024 I took on a new part-time job as the Director of Lights and Sound at the Chelmsford Center for the Arts. This has occupied a lot of my time and my brain space. Mainly brain space, as the job is part time. But I was thinking about the job a lot. Learning new technologies, making sure I understood what my duties and obligations are, and adapting to the schedule and lifestyle.

Also, I simply had less time to devote to working on the podcast. I also teach guitar and continued to work freelance as a sound designer and technical director for other projects. So, enough of my ‘splainin’ myself. Let’s dive into it.

In this episode I’ll be premiering three new songs, written as a thank you to the last three interviewees from Season five, Tod Pronto, Tret Fure and Barry Polisar. It takes me a long time to write and record a high-quality song. And I wanted to make sure that these three got my very best. As you are about to hear, one song grew out of a music class, another out of a family story and the last one, which took me longest and took several complete rewrites, is about a region in Vermont.

All of this took time until I got to a place where I thought I had something interesting to say.

[Pod Lick – Kalimba echoes]
 
[Northeast Kingdom]

I really enjoyed my time in Newport, Vermont when I went there to interview Tod Pronto for the podcast. My wife Marcy and I made the trip from our home in Chelmsford Massachusetts up Route 93, and through the Franconia Notch, the only place I am aware of where the US interstate goes down to one lane each way. Then 93 ended as it merged with 91 and finally almost in Canada we came to the quaint village of Newport.

Nestled in a small valley in the Northern Section of the Green Mountains, Newport sits on the shore of beautiful blue Lake Memphremagog. Adjacent to Canada this section of Vermont is referred to as the Northeast Kingdom. Thanks to Tod’s weekly streaming show, “Coffee with Tod,” I’ve come to know some of the people of the region and what goes on there.

While interviewing Tod it was obvious that he has deep roots there and a deep love for the region and its people. In casting about trying to come up with a topic for a song for Tod, I knew I had to include the Northeast Kingdom somehow.

Then, I remember being struck by a story he told about sitting in the local Waffle House drinking coffee and writing lyrics. And about how the waitress always called him “Hun” and how it made him feel good. I knew I had to put that into the song as well.

I decided to write a song about Tod choosing to leave Nashville and return home. If you’re a fan of this podcast, you’ll already know that “home” is a frequent topic of my songs. Way back in season 3 Episodes 7, 8 and 9 I wrote a song about coming home called “East Tennessee Valley”. {End of East Tennessee Valley plays in background}. Yeah, that one. Some of the themes are the same. I’ll play it after the end of the episode so you can compare it.

So, now that I had my theme for the song and my hooks, I set about writing the song. On about the third version, I finally had something I really liked. I wanted to make something that Tod could play if he wanted to. I kept the arrangement pretty simple. Just guitar, bass, drums, harmonica and vocals. I tried to include some of Tod’s frequent chord changes as well. I even played straight harmonica. It’s my hope that he might play it someday. I mean I wrote it but it’s his song as well as my song. He can play and record it as much as he wants royal free. It’s just my way of thanking him.

Enough of my yackin’. Give a listen now to Northeast Kingdom.

{Play Northeast Kingdom}

[The Blanket]

It’s funny how memory and perception can change over time. This next song is based on my perception, not necessarily reality. I don’t really know for sure that my mother made blankets for all my other brothers. But that’s my memory and my perception. And as we have all learned, of late, perception is reality. At least, it may as well be.

I wrote this next song for Tret Fure. If you haven’t listened to that interview, I strongly encourage you to do so. Tret is a true icon in folk music and just a delight to interview. I’ve known her and listened to he music for years. It was interesting to me then, to go back and study her complete body of work. Only in this way was I able to get a sense of recurring themes. Instead of just listening to my favorite tunes of hers over and over, I was able to delve deeply into who she is and what’s important to her.

Consequently, when it came time to write this song, I wanted to do it in a style that was like hers, and I wanted to include some of her favorite themes, family and self-realization. I think I’ve captured some of her phrasing as well.

I decided to use a simple arrangement again with guitar, bass, vocals and a mountain dulcimer.

So please enjoy Tret’s song, “The Blanket”.

{Play song – The Blanket}


[Wanna Go to the Beach]

I’m a gig worker. By that, I mean that I survive by having lots of little jobs. Although I’m retired, I also, as mentioned before, am the Technical Director for the Chelmsford Center for the Arts in Chelmsford, MA. I also teach music, guitar and theater for Creative Arts in Reading, MA. I’m a member of the Screen Actors Guild and, occasionally, work on films when I can find work. This past November did a sound design for the musical “Blood Brothers” for Theater Uncorked, a professional theater troupe, at the Boston Center for the Arts. Recently, I consulted on the production of the filming of a local comic. Holy shitaki! When you write it all down, I guess I did have a Wonderful Life, or a least a very busy one.

Through Creative Arts, one of my gigs is teaching music to special needs students at Reading Memorial High School in their LIFT program. I decided I’d try to write a song with the students even though they are somewhat non-verbal. The non-verbal students communicate by pointing to pictures, so I decided to use PowerPoint to create a series of pictures to allow them to make creative choices so that we could write a song together.

I had two students who helped me make the song and I wanted to make sure that I included input from both. I started by asking them what the mood of the song should be. One student chose “sad” and the other student chose “ happy”.
…Okaaaay.  Next, I asked them what the tempo, the speed of the song, should be. Again, one student chose “Slow” and the other chose “Fast”. Hm. Then I asked them what style the song should be aaaaannnnd, you guessed it, one student chose “rock” and the other chose “jazz”. Wow.

Now, I won’t go in the particulars of what the song is actually about so as not to spoil your first time hearing it. But, suffice it to say that the song includes some, for lack of a better term, ill-advised behavior by kids. Then it occurred to me that this was an ideal song to represent my interview with Barry Louis Polisar. In fact, I felt like I was probably influenced in the writing after reviewing Barry’s voluminous catalogue in preparation for my interview with him.

I decided to make a more heavily produced number than Barry’s earlier stuff and leaned more towards the style of his later work. I used guitar, bass, drums, lots of vocals and a Farfisa-like organ to produce the song. So, Barry, here is your Happy-Sad, Slow-Fast, Jazz-Rock, song “I Wanna Go to the Beach”.

{play “I Wanna Go to the Beach”}

[Podlick]

[Outro]

That’s it for this episode. I hope you have enjoyed these three thank you songs. If you’d like to hear more of my songs you can stream them on your favorite music service. I’ve published four albums that you can stream by searching for Tim Rose and the names of the albums. They are “Family Album”, and “Virtually Live”. I also have two albums that contain songs from the podcast that are not included on those albums, they are titled “The Rest of Tim Tunes, Season 1” and “The Rest of Tim Tunes, Season 2”.  I’ll soon be publishing my 3rd compilation of Tim Tunes Podcast songs called "The Rest of Tim Tunes, Seasons 3-5”

This season I’ll be focusing a little closer to home. I’ll be having interviews with old friends who have gone on to make their careers in music and performing, and new friends that I have met in the local singer-songwriter and theater scenes. We’ll speak with songwriters, musicians, singers, band directors, and service providers.

Please feel free to send me comments on this episode via Facebook at the Tim Tunes Podcast group or email me at timtunespodcast@gmail.com.

If you’d like to support the show you can subscribe on Patreon or send me a donation @rimtoes on Venmo or PayPal. You can also help promote the podcast by subscribing to the podcast in your listening app or by writing a review on whatever podcast tool you use or by liking us on Facebook or iTunes. Also, you can support the show just by listening to some of my albums and songs on your favorite music streaming service.

I’d like to take a minute to thank my super supporters, Jim Leach, Larry Green, Terry Sullivan, and the late Sally Sislak. These people have made a significant donation to Tim Tunes or have become high end subscribers on Patreon. However you support the show, thanks!

So, until next year, er, time. Hiehei, moimoi, moikka

[Outro Pod Lick, [After Outro Pod Lick ends]

Thank you, Sam.

Now as promised Here is “East Tennessee Valley” for comparison with “Northeast Kingdom”, Two songs about going home.