The Regular Friday Post

Rando Lyrics: Science in the home

So, there was this thing going around on Substack a week or so ago, sort of a challenge thing: “Find an old advertisement that would sum up your Substack” - or something like that, can’t find the post now. Whatever, I found this old ad for Martin guitars. I like Martin guitars, I have several. I also have several Gibsons, Yamahas, Fenders, and a few individual guitars from different manufacturers - Zager, Takamine and so on. I play them all. So, this ad sorta sums up what I write about - guitars, but it focuses on the most important parts of guitars, at least the acoustics I play the most: the wood. Yes, some of the above brands are electrics - they’re cool to play as well but the wood body plays a much less important part in the sound. The pickups and strings do the majority of the work in electric guitars, but in an acoustic guitar, the wooden top, sides, back, internal bracing wood and pattern, the neck, the headstock and fretboard design and materials all play a greater part in the sound and feel of the guitar. So, the brand promoted by this ad is unimportant - the work of grading, choosing, matching and finishing the wood that goes into making a great acoustic guitar is much more of a foundational part of the whole industry. I just want to share the joy of music and guitars with others, and to a large degree both of those things rely on quality workmanship and materials, both tangible and otherwise.

---

Last week’s rando lyrics: The lyric, “And I got to get a move on before the sun” is from the song "Wagon Wheel”, performed here by Darius Rucker. Written in part by Bob Dylan (as a kind of sketch of a song idea) and in part by Keith Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show (who added portions for the single version by Old Crow Medicine Show), it was released by Darius Rucker (and follows the Secor/OCMS version - with background vocals by the members of Lady Antebellum [now known as “Lady A”]) as Track 3 on the January 2013 album “True Believers”. Produced by Frank Rogers.

---

Other Voices/Something Completely Different Section:

Yeah, so in this section, sometimes I give shouts to other Substack writers, and other times, like today, I just put in whatever I want.

Today, It’s The Best and Worst of The Beatles:

For the record, my personal opinion (which other Beatles fans don’t give a damn about, I know…) is that these are both wrong - I’ve always liked “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (though I get the other Beatles’ complaints here) and I could always take or leave “Come Together”. Your mileage may vary. >Worst< and >Best<

---

Welcome to The Regular Friday post!

News from around the “biz” for today:

Streaming Royalties and Termination Rights - Maybe a bit esoteric for most readers, but if you have any skin in the biz game, Music Business Worldwide is an excellent source for stuff you should know.

Some Stuff That Made Me Laugh or Think:

Some Links For Today

I’m moving the links bits around and interspersing them by theme - the biz, etc. I think they weren’t getting much love stuck together at the bottom - I’ll do links to articles that follow a specific theme - songwriting and theory, guitars and playing techniques, recording, gigs, gear, etc each week so it’s a bit more limited

Today it’s: Songwriting and Theory (I know the “T” word can be scary - I’ll limit theory to the minimum required….mostly…mostly):

From Songtown: A Verse Writing Technique, Doing A Songwriter's Job

From Discmakers: Start Writing!!

From American Songwriter: Don't Just Copy What's On The Radio!

*Note on American Songwriter Magazine: There is an app called “Circle”, which is useful to subscribers to American Songwriter Magazine. The app’s administrator is Mr. Dean Fields, a good guy who we’ve featured on these pages before. The current iteration of the app has two main pages, the “Feed” where songwriters can post and receive feedback on their song lyrics. On that side of the app Mr. Fields also posts job openings in the “biz” and some of these are pretty cool. Most tend to be located in NYC, London and LA, but there are others as well. The other side is called “Spaces” which sort of has the kitchen sink of announcements, discounts, past AS issues and other stuff as well as links to americansongwriter.com, which is where I get a lot of the stuff I post links to on here. If you’re a musician, singer, producer, engineer, or anything else in the “biz” you really should be subscribed to the magazine (digital or print or both) and spending some time at the website and app. Just sayin… OTOH, their daily emails, a feature called “The Daily Co-Write” has recently become much less useful IMHO because it’s sort of developed into an aggregation of “teaser” type headlines that require a click that just takes you to the app. I get they want to generate traffic to their main page, but it seems like they could give a more complete thumbnail of the news without the “click to find out the whole story” business - it’s annoying and there should be a place for headlines with brief actual news rather than the “Find Out Which Rich, Famous Artist Wouldn’t Cover This Other Rich Famous Artist’s Song!” stuff. Just sayin’...

From ASCAP: Manage Your Songwriting Time

ED. None of these result in compensation to me in any way, and I’m not endorsing any of them, but some of my readers may find them as interesting as I did…

---

For Today:

It’s Darius Rucker’s version of “Wagon Wheel”. A kind of hybrid song, “Wagon Wheel” lyrics can be traced back to folk songs from the ‘30s and maybe even earlier…

From Wikipedia: “"Wagon Wheel" is composed of two different parts. The chorus and melody for the song comes from a demo recorded by Bob Dylan during the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid sessions in February 1973.^[5][6] Although never officially released, the Dylan song was released on a bootleg recording, usually named after the chorus and its refrain, "Rock Me Mama". Dylan left the song an unfinished sketch.”

Credit: Wikipedia Link: Wagon Wheel

I'd gotten a (Bob) Dylan bootleg in like ninth grade and I let (band co-founder) Ketch (Secor) listen to it, and he wrote the verses because Bob kind of mumbles them and that was it. We've been playing that song since we were like 17, and it's funny because we've never met Dylan, but the song is technically co-written by Bob Dylan. What's great about "Wagon Wheel" is that it has grown organically. The popularity of it was all based on word of mouth. There was no radio airplay for it. We made a music video for it, but it wasn't "November Rain" or anything. No one was like, 'Oh my God, what's this video about?' And 16 years later, it went gold, then Darius Rucker cut it.^[4]

Chris "Critter" Fuqua

From Wikipedia (ibid):

“Secor saw the Dylan contribution as "an outtake of something he had mumbled out on one of those tapes. I sang it all around the country from about 17 to 26, before I ever even thought, 'Oh, I better look into this.'"[13] When Secor sought copyright on the song in 2003 to release it on O.C.M.S. in (2004), he discovered Dylan credited the phrase "Rock me, mama" to bluesman Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, who recorded a song with this title in 1944. He likely got it from a Big Bill Broonzy recording "Rockin' Chair Blues" from 1940 using the phrase "rock me, baby". The phrase "like a wagon wheel" is used in the 1939 Curtis Jones song "Roll Me Mama" that includes the lines "Now roll me over, just like I'm a wagon wheel" and "just like I ain't got no bone". He re-recorded it in 1963 as "Roll Me Over", with some of the lyrics. In the meantime, Lil' Son Jackson came up with "Rockin' and Rollin" in 1950 using the phrase "Roll me, baby, like you roll a wagon wheel". As Secor says: "In a way, it's taken something like 85 years to get completed."[12  

So a particularly interesting history, and it’s today’s…

…A Song To Play…

Note that Mr. Rucker uses a capo at the second fret in the video, using the chord shapes from GMajor while keeping the song in the original key of AMajor (which includes the dreaded F#m chord). So, a bit easier to play capoed, or if your voice, like mine, finds a friendlier home in GMaj, just leave the capo off and play the chords listed below.

Credit: Chordify Link: >Wagon Wheel (Darius Rucker)<

Lyrics (From Genius)

Link: >Wagon Wheel (Darius Rucker)<

[Verse 1]
Heading down south to the land of the pines
I'm thumbing my way into North Caroline
Staring up the road and pray to God I see headlights
I made it down the coast in seventeen hours
Picking me a bouquet of dogwood flowers
And I'm a-hoping for Raleigh, I can see my baby tonight

[Chorus]
So rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel
Rock me, mama, any way you feel
Hey, mama, rock me
Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain
Rock me, mama, like a southbound train
Hey, mama, rock me

[Verse 2]
Running from the cold up in New England
I was born to be a fiddler in an old time string band
My baby plays a guitar, I pick a banjo now
Oh, north country winters keep a-getting me down
Lost my money playing poker so I had to leave town
But I ain't turning back to living that old life no more

[Chorus]
So rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel
Rock me, mama, any way you feel
Hey, mama, rock me
Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain
Rock me, mama, like a southbound train
Hey, mama, rock me

[Verse 3]
Walking to the south out of Roanoke
I caught a trucker out of Philly had a nice long toke
But he's a heading west from the Cumberland gap
To Johnson City, Tennessee
And I got to get a move on before the sun
I hear my baby calling my name and I know that she's the only one
And if I die in Raleigh at least I will die free

[Chorus]
So rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel
Rock me, mama, any way you feel
Hey, mama, rock me
Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain
Rock me, mama, like a southbound train
Hey, mama, rock me
So rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel
Rock me, mama, any way you feel
Hey, hey, mama, rock me
Mama, rock me
Mama, rock me
Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain
Rock me, mama, like a southbound train
Hey, hey, mama, rock me
You can rock me
Rock me

---

The “ME!” Section…..

What I’m Listening2: Link: >Coffee At The Harvest Moon<

---

Shameless Self Promotion Section:

My song is out! Link: “>Long Road Back<”click on this link for streaming options, then scroll down for links (or just click on these links) to Amazon, Apple, Pandora, iTunes and even Spotify

---

If you’re enjoying our content, please let your friends and musician acquaintances know about us!!! Thanks for supporting this free newsletter!

Disclaimer Section

This Substack is free, I receive no compensation of any kind from companies or products I mention. Some linked or quoted material may be copyrighted by others, and I credit them. I rely on the “Fair Use” doctrine for educational purposes (Link: Fair Use). *I do not use AI, things I link to might…

-Michael Acoustic

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this newsletter.

---

This Week’s Documentary Film Recommendation:

“Parrot Heads”

An in-depth look at the loyal fan base of Jimmy Buffet… I found it on PLEX, it’s probably on other services as well.

---

Thank You To Our New Subscribers and Followers!! This Week’s Conversation With Mika:

No conversation this week either. I made her come in from the deck because there were 4 or 5 sparrows that were teasing her by swooping by just out of reach and she was getting a little too agitated. They were still screwing around outside after she had to come in, so she’s BIG MAD at both sparrows and me here…

---

Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic

“It’s never really final - you just run out of things you can bear to change…”