archive: 3 august 2007: troublesome ballad

I am re-writing that ballad.

There was music that followed the Lee Smith and Gurney Norman readings at Hindman Settlement School's Appalachian Writers Workshop. I cannot remember her name but she started off with two songs on her banjo, then one on the dulcimer, and one on the guitar and then a line-note song (Old Regular Baptist style). One of the songs on the banjo was a ballad all right, and it dawned on me I really need to change the way mine is written. "Bonnie and Sue" is written as a poem and there's no music in it. When I read it I cannot hear the music that it might fit to.... So I am going to listen to a LOT of ballads and get a better feel for this.

Plus, as much as I like the chorus in the one I have written, I think I will change the scheme to 4 lines, the 4th line either repeating the third or a line that is repeated each stanza. I think this will be the rhyme scheme, although it does not have to be strict. That all depends on how it is sung, I realize.

first line - A
second line - B
third line - B
fourth line/chorus line - A

I think there's still going to be a bit of speculation, "tell your own tale", but I haven't yet decided about whether or not I will insert myself as a newspaper/archivist in the telling of the story. But... I am just not satisfied with the ballad I have written so far... It just doesn't grab me. There's a few good images and ideas, but the wording just isn't good.

I also remembered last night when heading back home that when I first came to Berea for my interview at Berea College, I bought a cassette at the Artisan Center. It was Carla Gover's "Hush, My Restless Soul." Interesting how events pan out; that I would buy that cassette, move here for work, grow more and more interested in old-time and traditional/folk Appalachian music, meet Erynn Marshall (that rascally fiddler from Canada), meet Mitch Barrett, meet mudpi's Carol, Robert, John, and Glen, try my hand at writing a ballad for my poetry series and then want to learn how to play the banjo. Yep, that sums it up. Wow.