That’s My Job
I woke up cryin’ late at night, when I was very young
I had dreamed my father had passed away and gone.
My world revolved around him. I couldn’t lie there anymore
So I made my way down the mirrored hall and tapped upon his door.
And I said, “Daddy, I’m so afraid.
How would I go on, with you gone that way?
Don’t wanna cry anymore
So may I stay with you?”
CHORUS:
And he said, “That’s my job. That’s what I do.
Everything I do is because of you
To keep you safe with me.
That’s my job, you see.”
Later we barely got along, this teenage boy and he
Most of the fights, it seems, were over different dreams
We each held for me.
He wanted knowledge and learning. I wanted to fly out west
Said “I could make it out there, if I just had the fare
I got half, will you loan me the rest?”
And I said, “Daddy, I’m so afraid
There’s no guarantee in the plans I’ve made
And if I should fail, who will pay my way back home?”
CHORUS
Every person carves his spot, and fills the hole with life
And I pray someday I might light as bright as he.
I woke up early one bright fall day and spread the tragic news
After all my travels, I settled down within a mile or two.
I make my livin’ with words and rhymes, and all this tragedy
Should go into my head and out instead, as bits of poetry.
But I say, “Daddy I’m so afraid.
How will I go on, with you gone this way?
How can I come up with a song to say, ‘I love you’?”
That’s my job, that’s what I do
Everything I do is because of you
To keep you safe with me. That’s my job, you see.
Everything I do is because of you
To keep you safe with me.
The Cape
Story by Jim Janosky
Song written by Guy Clark, Jim Janosky, and Susanna Clark
Recorded by Guy Clark, Kathy Mattea
Susanna Clark and I were just visiting one day and we got to talking about our childhoods and the pranks we used to play. Then we started talking about how, when we were kids, we used to really think we could fly. That led to a conversation about the amazing faith that little kids have, and how they really believe those kinds of things could happen. We had several more conversations about this and started writing down random notes and phrases and lines on the idea of childhood faith.
I told her the story of a guy I used to work with up in Pennsylvania. We worked at a butcher shop together. Once, when he was a kid, he tried to be a tightrope walker. He put a rope between two beams in his barn and took the tires off his bicycle and tried to go across that tightrope on the rims of his bicycle. He got about a foot and ended up unconscious on the floor of his barn. His mother woke him up just so she could beat him! She said, “What made you think you could do this?” He said, “I just believed I could!”
So we kept talking about the idea of childhood faith and it stewed for a while. Over the course of several meetings, we got four or five verses down on this theme of thinking you could fly. Later, Susanna showed it to Guy, and he got pretty interested in that idea. He took all of our notes and then we met once or twice after that. Guy basically congealed it all into “The Cape.”
Guy started singing it in his live shows and got some really good feedback from it. One day, he was rehearsing it at a gig in New York and Kathy Mattea heard it. She later put it on her Walking Away A Winner album, and then Guy later put it on his Dublin Blues. Her version was a lot more up-tempo version of it. I’ve always liked Guy’s a little better, because it’s more earthy and natural.
What we were trying to get at with the song was to maintain that faith in yourself, in your dream, in your idea, even in God — no matter what happens. In this song, the guy is older and still has that childlike faith. He still thinks he can fly, metaphorically, and believes that life is just a leap of faith, and he’ll probably still believe it until he’s dead. That’s certainly been a theme of my life. “The Cape” is really a symbol of that ability to maintain your belief, no matter how tough things get, and it gets harder as you get older. And if you really keep that faith, you’ll be able to fly; you won’t crash and burn.
I found a letter I got a few years ago from a cancer survivor. It reads, “Jim, I am the patient featured in a film about lung cancer that Dr. Alan Kramer is making in the Living with Cancer series. Let me add my thanks to you and Guy and Susanna for allowing us to use that wonderful song, ‘The Cape’ in the film. I was turned on to the song this spring by a friend who knows me very well and thought that it sounded made-to-order for me; in particular, about the leap of faith. Later, I was lucky enough to attend (the bluegrass festival) MerleFest in North Carolina and heard Guy singing it. I was blown away by him. I was diagnosed at age 65 with Stage 4 lung cancer and given only 8-10 months to live. I never quite accepted that, though, and worked hard with my doctors. I am trying to do something to change my chances. I have been very lucky and am now a five-year survivor. That is what our film is all about: the conjunction of my hard work and luck, along with the medical world’s advances in treatment and drugs. In a month, I will be celebrating my 70th birthday, my five-year survival, and life in general here in Sonoma Valley with a few hundred of my closest friends and family. My friend is going to sing his version of ‘The Cape’ and we are going to show rough cuts of the film. Thanks again for everything. Wells Whitney.”
I just found out that recently that Mr. Whitney is actually now a twelve-year survivor and at 77 is still doing great. It’s good to hear something like that. It gives you a really nice, warm feeling. There’s so much rejection in the songwriting world. Getting a letter like that makes up for about 400,000 rejections!
The Cape
Eight years old with flour sack cape
Tied all around his neck
He climbed up on the garage
Figurin’ what the heck
He screwed his courage up so tight
The whole thing come unwound
He got a runnin’ start and bless his heart
He headed for the ground
CHORUS:
He’s one of those who knows that life
Is just a leap of faith
Spread your arms and hold your breath
And always trust your cape
All grown up with a flour sack cape
Tied all around his dream
He’s full of piss and vinegar
He’s bustin’ at the seams
He licked his finger and checked the wind
It’s gonna be do or die
He wasn’t scared of nothin’, boys
He was pretty sure he could fly
CHORUS
Old and grey with a flour sack cape
Tied all around his head
He’s still jumpin’ off the garage
And will be till he’s dead
All these years the people said
He’s actin’ like a kid
He did not know he could not fly
So he did
The Dance
Story by Tony Arata
Song written by Tony Arata
Recorded by Garth Brooks
The way “The Dance” got written and recorded was almost like a movie script, which was kind of ironic, since I got the idea for the song after watching a movie.
I had gone to college in Statesboro, Georgia and played in a band in college. When I graduated, I continued to play in the clubs. One night, I heard that Jim Glaser was looking for material for his next album. His record company was in Atlanta and I got a little cassette tape to him and he decided to record “The Man in the Mirro
r.” That was the reason I first came to Nashville: to meet Jim Glaser. We decided to go ahead and move here for good in 1986.
One night my wife and I went to hear a bunch of songwriters at The Bluebird Café in Green Hills. I was blown away, and I decided I wanted to move back to Georgia because there was no way I could write songs like those guys. But my wife talked me into staying.
A little while later, my wife was out of town, I think, and I decided to go out and see a movie. The movie was Peggy Sue Got Married with Nicholas Cage and Kathleen Turner. In the movie, Peggy Sue gets divorced when she’s in her forties, and then has a chance to go back to high school and change her decisions. When Nicholas Cage asks her to dance, she starts to say no, and then she looks down at the locket with the pictures of her kids in it. She realizes if she says no and doesn’t marry him, the kids’ pictures will fade.
I went away from the theater thinking about that scene for a long time. There are so many times in life when we want to avoid the pain, but if we do, a lot of times we will have to miss a lot of the joy in life, too.
A little while after I wrote that, I was singing at an open mike night at a little club called Douglas Corner over on Eighth Avenue in Nashville. And there sitting at the bar was this stocky guy wearing a cowboy hat. A lot of guys look like fake cowboys with hats on, but Garth didn’t. He looked like the real deal. We talked for a while, and later we were playing at The Bluebird Café together. It was on a Sunday night. We were doing the early show, when nobody was in the room. I played “The Dance” and he came up to me later and said, “Man, if I ever get a record deal, I want to record that song.” And I thought, “Okay, sure.” He was selling boots and I was lifting 50-pound boxes for a living. We had the music industry right where we wanted them, right?
Anyway, a year or so after that, I was working at a company called Tom Jackson and Associates, writing articles about busses, and I got a call one day from Garth and he said, “I just signed with Capitol and I want to record ‘The Dance.’”
I said, “You’re kidding me!” But he wasn’t. So he took it into the studio. A couple of months after that, he called me again and said he had just finished the album and wanted me to come to his manager’s office and listen to it. I remember I didn’t even recognize it at first because of the piano intro. But it was beautiful.
The great thing about “The Dance” is that it was recorded by a songwriter and produced by a songwriter, Allen Reynolds, so they really nailed it. When the album was finished, they released several singles that did really well. They were actually starting to work on his second album and didn’t have plans to release “The Dance” as a single. But Allen Reynolds wanted to put out one more single. Jimmy Bowen was head of Capitol by then and he said no. But Allen talked to Bowen and said, “Would you just do me a favor and go see Garth sing it live before you make your final decision?” Bowen went to see Garth sing it and the crowd went wild, so he said he would go ahead and release one more song. I’m sure glad he did.
When they finished the video for “The Dance,” Garth called me again and said he wanted me to see it. I loved what they did with it, using clips of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the video. At the end, Garth’s voice comes on and says something about how his life is like “The Dance” — that he could have missed some of the heartaches if he hadn’t chased his dreams, but that he wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I just bawled when I saw the video.
“The Dance” won Song of the Year from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association and it was the most played song on country radio that year. It was also nominated for a Grammy. My wife and I went that year. I remember walking along the Avenue of the Americas in New York City and seeing all the stars lining up on the red carpet outside. Everything seemed so surreal.
We get letters all the time where people tell us they played the song at their father or mother’s funeral. I really believe in fate. It’s kind of interesting because Peggy Sue Got Married is a lot about fate, and the song is about fate, and the way it got written and recorded seemed to be guided by fate, like it was meant to happen. It didn’t seem like it really had that much to do with me. All the stars were lined up just right, and all I really had to do was show up.
The Dance
Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared ’neath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known that you’d ever say goodbye?
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance
Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn’t I a king?
But if I’d only known how the king would fall
Hey, who’s to say, you know I might have changed it all
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance
Yes my life is better left to chance
I could have missed the pain but I’d have had to miss the dance
The Devil Went Down to Georgia
Story by Charlie Daniels
Song written by Charlie Daniels, Tom Crain, Taz DiGregorio, Fred Laroy Edwards, Charles Hayward, and James Marshall
Recorded by The Charlie Daniels Band
We were in the recording studio doing an album. We had written and rehearsed and arranged all the songs. Then we came to the glaring realization that we did not have a good fiddle tune, and we needed one. So the band and I took a couple of days off and went into a rehearsal studio and wrote this song. My style of writing at the time was, if I had an idea, I wanted to hear the music for it right now. It helped motivate me.
The idea of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” came into my head and I just kind of started it and we added a beat and Taz DiGregorio came up with that riff at the beginning of the devil’s part and that’s how it went, everybody adding their ideas.
I had read a poem by Stephen Vincent Benét called “The Mountain Whippoorwill” when I was a kid. I think I read it in literature class when I was in the ninth grade or somewhere along there. It’s a poem about a fiddle contest. Being a young fiddle player, it kind of stuck with me. That possibly could have had something to do with me developing the lyric to the song. It’s hard to say, really, what motivates the idea for a song. You just kind of pull it out of the air.
The music really plays off the lyrics in this song; it’s not just repeating the melody. It’s a stylized thing. We were recording at Woodland Studios in Nashville. I started writing the lyrics and we put the music together. I’m sure we tightened up a little and tweaked the lyrics, but we had a pretty good idea where we were going from the beginning as far as the story. Everybody contributed musical ideas to it.
As for some of the refrains, like “Chicken in the bread pan, pickin’ out dough. Granny does your dog bite? No child, no” — that’s just an old square dance refrain. “Fire on the mountain, run boys run” — that’s just a timing thing the callers used to say at square dances when they didn’t really have anything else to say.
Mark O’Connor ended up recording “The Devil Comes Back to Georgia” as a sequel. I played on that, and Johnny Cash and Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt did some of the singing, but that was really Mark’s song. “Big Bad John” and a few other songs like that had sequels to them. Those are the kind of ballads that you could just change the story a little bit and do a new version.
I used seven fiddles on the devil’s part on the original recording. Nowadays, you could probably do it electronically, but then we used seven different fiddles to play the devil’s part. He wasn’t actually playing anything. He was just making a lot of noise. The line says, ‘Then a band of demons jo
ined in and sounded something like this,” so we just thought what would a band of demons sound like? Probably just a lot of noise.
The Devil Went Down to Georgia
The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind, he was willing to make a deal.
When he came across this young man sawin’ on a fiddle and playin’ it hot.
And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump and said, “Boy let me tell you what.
I bet you didn’t know it, but I’m a fiddle player too.
And if you’d care to take a dare, I’ll make a bet with you.
Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his due.
I’ll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, ’cause I think I’m better than you.”
The boy said “My name’s Johnny and it might be a sin,
But I’ll take your bet, you’re gonna regret, ’cause I’m the best that’s ever been.”
Johnny, rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard.
’Cause hell’s broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals the cards.
And if you win you get this shiny fiddle made of gold.
But if you lose, the devil gets your soul.
The devil opened up his case and he said “I’ll start this show.”
And fire flew from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow.
And he pulled the bow across his strings and it made an evil hiss.
Then a band of demons joined in and it sounded something like this.
When the devil finished, Johnny said, “Well you’re pretty good ol’ son.
But sit down in that chair, right there, and let me show you how it’s done.”
Fire on the mountain, run boys, run.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music: The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs Page 23