Don't Forget the Umbrella

Supposedly April showers bring May flowers, but while my garden is blooming, it's also bringing more showers. More thunderstorms. More flooding rivers. I like rain as much or more than the next person, but even I'm starting to think "enough is enough!" You think that by now I'd remember to take an umbrella everywhere, but I still forget.

We spent the weekend in Nashville, visiting a couple of places we'd never been before. On Saturday night we went to Belcourt Taps & Tapas, a funky little place in an area of town called Hillsboro Village. There were songwriters performing throughout the evening, our server told us their publishers had booked them for exposure. My partner recognized one of the performing songwriters (Meredith Blis) because we'd all auditioned for the Bluebird Cafe on the same day earlier this year and the three of us briefly chatted. A guy named Erik Dylan did a couple of songs and I think he's got something going something with a song called something like "Jesus Was a Wine Man But I Prefer Gin". The crowd loved him and the publishers seemed to be all over him too. It was interesting to watch "the business" in action. I felt like the outsider I am, despite the fact that our server was a really friendly woman (and former song plugger) who said she hoped we did end up moving to Nashville.

We drove home from Nashville this past Sunday by heading west across Tennessee and then cutting over to Missouri and coming up I-55 north. The flooding was amazing, I wish I'd taken photographs. At one point a lane of I-55 northbound was closed because of the floods and they'd sand-bagged the shoulder.

I feel sorry for the farmers. They can only look up at the cloudy skies and shake their heads, wondering if they'll have to replant the corn or forgo it (and it's current high price yield) and plant soybeans or if the floods have ruined the year (and future ones?) completely. They have to be worrying about the future commodities they've promised.

Another thing that has me thinking of farmers this morning is the fact that I've been listening to Matraca Berg's new album "The Dreaming Fields". The title track is more or less about the death of the family farm (you might recognize it if you're a Trisha Yearwood fan). The chorus is so powerful. I hope to some day write these kinds of lyrics.

Oh I'm goin' down to the dreaming fields
But what will be my harvest now
Where every tear that falls on a memory
Feels like rain on the rusted plow
Rain on the rusted plow

Rain and farms and Nashville. Matraca Berg is certainly no outsider to Nashville even if she is unknown to so much of America. I listen to her lyrics and think, "man, she's seen a lot of heartbreak, but what resilience" and then I read a blog like Holly Gleason's review of this album and you think, "all that and she's a nice person, too? Wow."

The whole album is really good music and really great songwriting. Another current favorite of mine is "You and Tequila" (Kenny Chesney recorded it with Grace Potter on). The chorus is fantastic:

You and tequila make me crazy

Run like poison in my blood

One more night might kill me, baby

One is one too many, one more is never enough

But the bridge is downright brilliant.

When it comes to you, oh the damage I could do

It's always your favorite sins that do you in

Matraca's ability to connect with heartache and dysfunctional relationships is our gain. Hat's off, but don't forget an umbrella.