Track of the Week #?: Rock Solid

[John A Arkansawyer]

This is a very simple lyric that doesn’t need much interpretation—plus I don’t have the lyric sheet handy!—so for now I’m going to write about what it means to me and why and I’ll put the lyrics in later. (Now done! And as it turns out, I did have a little interpretation to do with them.)

Last year, I was in a very low place in my life. I’ve been those places before, and I’ve always pulled out of them, and it’s always taken art—usually but not only music--to do it, and this time was no exception. I was so frustrated that I spent money I shouldn’t have and went to some of my very favorite places in the world to stay with some of my very favorite people and see some of my very favorite musicians play music.

The place was the Bay Area, and particularly my old buddy’s off-the-books bed and breakfast. I’ve been hanging with him in this place off and on for over thirty years. It used to just be an apartment with a side order of crash pad, but after AIDS killed his boyfriend things changed some with him. He’s not a lonely guy but he is a guy who needs people around, and having interesting people move in and out quickly is just the thing for him. It’s always good being there with him. Two of our best friends’ daughter was born in that front room, and it was in that same front room I learned one of those friends was dying of cancer. We’ve sat in that room and talked about his stroke and my marriage. I’ve met amazing people there.

Before I got there, I landed in Sacramento. Patterson Hood was playing a solo show there that night, and the next two nights was playing with the Downtown Rumblers (Brad Morgan and Jay Gonzalez) in Marin County. It was a fucked-up trip, mostly. I had no working credit card till the next day, so I had no place to stay that night but an airport bench and paid way too much for a taxi out to that airport, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, because that night, I got to hang out with music-loving friends and sit right in the front row and see Patterson Hood open the show by debuting a song he’d written the week before in Utah:



That song really moved me. I’ve been trying to get my shit together for my entire adult life, bless my heart, and here was a suggestion shoved right in my face that it might not be too late to do so and that there were some simple things I could do to get started, things like show up when you promise to be there. Like be needed, and like fulfilling that need when someone does you the courtesy of needing you. It’s simple stuff and it’s hard to do but not because it’s complicated, just because it’s hard, which is hard for someone who is not a simple man to see sometimes.

So he played it the next two nights, and the second night I told him after the show how much it’d moved me, and that third night he dedicated it to me and gave me the lyric sheet and basically made my night before I had to drive back to the Sacramento airport and get maybe two hours sleep before making it home to teach a class at church. I got my chance right there and then to start being a rock solid kind of dude and that time I pegged it.

It’s been up and down since then, but I’ve got that song in mind when I need it and it helps. And when it doesn’t, I have one other little piece of wisdom from Patterson to keep with me.

Not long after that show, I was having a kind of rough day and I was driving down I-630 for some reason and listening to Alabama Ass Whuppin’ when 18 Wheels of Love came on. Those of you who know various peoples’ actual last names, including mine, would know why it was a big deal for this guy named John to hear that woman named Jan gave life another stab at fifty-five.

I was fifty-five when I heard those words in that way for the first time. When the gentle encouragement of Rock Solid didn’t move me along, I nudged my pride and reminded myself that if she could do it from her position, in a world a lot crueler to her than it’s ever been to me, then I could do it from mine.

Yesterday I turned fifty-six on Father’s Day. My birthday was Father’s Day the year I was born and the year my daughter was born just hours before. Yesterday, my daughter and I drove from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Florence, Alabama by way of Jasper, Arkansas, where my mother is ninety-six and in a nursing home. I got us here in time for her to meet some of my friends and to see three of the great songwriters of our day perform to support a real good man who got a real bad break. Today my daughter and I will, with any luck, tour FAME Studios and maybe she’ll understand, today or someday, why driving through Tuscumbia (home of the Stroker Ace!) into Muscle Shoals and on to Florence gave me the willies and the wonders and made me put Aretha Franklin on the car stereo here in Calvert County.

I don’t know if I’m a Rock Solid Kind of Dude yet, but yesterday I did a pretty good job of it. Today is starting out pretty well. And tomorrow is on its way.

I’m ready for it.

I can’t promise you this song, or this performer, or any particular good thing in life, will do for you what it did for me, and I don’t know exactly what can or will, but I will promise you this: You can find something in life that will make it not just worth living, but living well and living right.

You be ready, too. That’s how it starts.

[LBRod]

Good stuff, John, though I don't understand how the guy
with the lyrics sheet can't get them posted.
Looking forward to the next time we get to share some fun.

[Clams]

Yes it's worth the long read. Right on, John.

[Flea]

Good stuff, John, though I don't understand how the guy
with the lyrics sheet can't get them posted.

Blame it on the bivalve.

[John A Arkansawyer]

Good stuff, John, though I don't understand how the guy
with the lyrics sheet can't get them posted.

Well, there's that little matter of still being an hour and nine minutes, says Mister Google, from my home. But I'll get on that, Real Soon Now!

[Cole Younger]

Fantastic job John A. You nailed one of my favorite things about music. It helps us through some of our toughest times. And you are a rock solid kind of dude as far as I'm concerned.

[John A Arkansawyer]

Fantastic job John A. You nailed one of my favorite things about music. It helps us through some of our toughest times. And you are a rock solid kind of dude as far as I'm concerned.

That's one of the things it's for, singing through the hard times, as U. Utah Phillips said. It can also make us better. Or worse, if that's how we're minded. Art can be put to whatever purpose the person experiencing it chooses. Todd Rundgren tells the story of how he lived through a home invasion, tied up and fearful of his life (among others; if I remember correctly, there were other innocent bystanders there when it happened). The creepiest part of it, in my memory of reading the story, is that one of the burglars was humming his lovely song "I Saw The Light" throughout it all. I can only imagine how that would have felt.

And thanks for the compliment! I'm trying to be, and you get to see me at my best.

[John A Arkansawyer]

So here is the lyric as printed. It's been through a title shortening and at least one major (in my opinion) change since then.

Rock Solid Kind of Dude

If you find yourself in the middle of nowhere
What you need is to find a rock solid kind of dude
If he says he'll pick you up at 10 in the morning, he'll be there
Have no fear, he's a rock solid kind of dude
He's a rock solid kind of dude

When your girl she leaves you cause you're going nowhere
and your friends are self centered and crude
and suddenly you see her hanging out everywhere
with a rock solid kind of dude
while you're sitting at home in front of the tube

If your tires are flat and car is broke down
and your best laid plans are misconstrued
and you ain't been laid since your nervous breakdown
don't give up yet I'm telling you*
cuz everyone loves a hard luck song
with a chorus you can sing along to
it's not too late to bloom and steal your fate
and become a rock solid kind of dude

A rock solid kind of dude

2am Grand American, Salt Lake City UT.

*This line had a major change which, in my opinion, strengthens the song. On the record, it's "Don't give up man, I promise you". He took out the "yet", which makes it an even more determined song, which is good, and changed "I'm telling you" to "I promise you". All artists tell, in some form; only some promise.

So it is a pretty simple song, but there are a few things to say about it.

That first verse is about the sort of thing that can happen to anyone. Who among us has never had the need to have someone come out to the middle of nowhere, whether a literal physical nowhere or the nowhere of your mind or even the nowhere of Nowhere Man? And who among us hasn't had someone not show up at ten in the morning? Usually someone who promises when someone else, someone more reliable, would have promised if that fucker hadn't? And I say fucker with the greatest of affection. I've been him, and I've known him in his many guises and aspects.

That second verse is about it sinking in that not being a rock solid kind of dude--who doesn't have to be a genius or a strongman or a charmer, just someone who does the good things he says he'll do--is kind of limiting your life to the things that make you not that dude in the first place. If you wouldn't rather be with your girl, or your guy, or whoever you want to be with, instead of sucking on the glass tit, then I just don't know what to tell you but to quote George Carlin's "Drink up, Shriner!"

That third verse is about all the physical signs of not having that rock solidity in you. Your tools aren't working and neither is your tool, no one understands you and that just might maybe possibly be your own damn fault. And if it's your fault, then by god it's something you just might maybe possibly can change if you just don't stop trying to do some, any, this, or that fucking thing and do start trying to change. And all that shit you've been through just might be the rich ground from which you can make it happen. People love to hear a sad song because it makes them happy. I don't know why but I know they do. It's not just that someone else's problems are worse, though that can be both comforting and motivating, and it's not that someone else is suffering, though in a few cases there's a certain amount of pleasure and what they call schadenfreude in that. If you pinned me down on it, I'd say they like it because they see someone else suffered and made it through enough to tell the tale, and because they have a feeling of human solidarity with the sufferers and the strivers and their triumph, when they triumph, is ours, too, as James Baldwin tells us.

And it's not too late to make that turn, so long as you're capable of hearing the words and spitting them back out, or spitting your own out in harmony with them. You can still bloom at an advanced age, even if you have to steal your fate.

Steal your fate.

So when I complimented Patterson on this song after hearing it for the second time, I did something I try really hard not to do (unless asked to) with a piece of art still fresh and maybe not quite done: I focused on a detail. I try so hard not to do that. Saying something is good or moved you or didn't bowl you over (Hold On, as The Weight of the Wonderment, didn't knock me out when I heard it that weekend--turns out it needs a full band arrangement--and I'd've had to be honest about that if I'd been asked) is one thing, but getting inside the details of someone's fresh artistic process is, for me, wrong.

The next night, Patterson sang the lyric as "twist your fate" instead of "steal your fate". I like steal your fate better, but I was thrilled to see I hadn't locked that detail in with praise and that he was still messing with it. It's better not to have the echo of Dylan's Simple Twist of Fate there, for all sorts of reasons, and even without that, "steal" is better. It's your fate, of course, but other people, other forces, with other interests have ahold of it. They stole it from you fair and square and now you have to steal it back. You can slip it out of their pockets quietly or blow the bank vault open, but steal it back you must.

You've probably noticed I take a lot of pleasure in the telling of my own misadventures and fuckups. I mean, I like telling stories generally, but there's something about laughing at my own idiocies and foibles that I particularly cherish.

Just yesterday, when I discovered TC didn't have the phone number I needed to call to get my and my daughter's tickets to the show, I let out a quick "fuck fuck fuck" right in front of my daughter, who, like a champ, pointed out that "Daddy, you just used a bad word". Lord, that tickled me to hear! and it tickles me to tell it now. That I then quickly came up with a way to get that number using his phone? That's kind of boring, really, unless you were the person who needed the number. But my fuckup, right in front of my daughter, on Father's Day? That's funny.

And that's the sort of thing that'll save you, if you will only let it.

[John A Arkansawyer]

I may be singing this song in church soon. Does anyone happen to have the chords? I can sing it--been singing it every now and then to myself since I heard it--but I don't play a chording instrument. Any help will be gratefully accepted!

[John A Arkansawyer]

It's official! To quote my own damn self from Effbook:

If you are an Arkansawyer and a Heathen like me, and are looking for something to do in Little Rock this Sunday morning, you are cordially invited to see me sing two songs in church, at least one of which you might have heard a time or two.

11 AM sharpish. Smoking on the deck. Wilderness area three steps beyond. No coolers or glass containers. Percussion instruments welcome! All the ins and outs you can get consent for, but dear god please not in front of the children. 12:15 PM curfew. Break it with me.

You'll miss the best part if you're Late For Church. That's not a hint. But this is:

Bless your heart. Those who know, do not speak, m'kay?

Unitarian Universalist Church of a Little more Rock than usual this Sunday
1818 Reservoir Road
Little Rock, Arkansaw

[pearlbeer]

Nice, JohnA!

I can't quite tell from the video, but looks to be mostly a two chord song, I'd guess Em walking down to A. Now, of course the Truckers tune down a whole step, and I assume Patterson plays this way solo. So, if I am right (highly unlikely, as usual) you would be playing a D/Dm to a G.

[John A Arkansawyer]

Nice, JohnA!

I can't quite tell from the video, but looks to be mostly a two chord song, I'd guess Em walking down to A. Now, of course the Truckers tune down a whole step, and I assume Patterson plays this way solo. So, if I am right (highly unlikely, as usual) you would be playing a D/Dm to a G.

I believe that is correct! However, as it turns out, I am singing unaccompanied. Which is kind of terrifying. But the music director is my friend, and he made me audition it twice before he said yes. He says no a lot more often to me than he does yes. And this time, I thought about ditching it. It's a lot harder to sing than it seems. I tried making it easier by taking out syllables. Then I finally got smart and remembered that Patterson is a better song writer than I am. (Well, duh.) I put it back almost exactly the way he had it. I did change "ain't been laid" to "ain't been kissed" so as not to distract people with details, and very lightly tweaked what remained. I changed two more words; I might change one back.

You'll know how it went by whether I have a video to post. Which I will, because the other song is easy to sing and it kicks ass. I could still fuck this one up. We'll see how it goes.

[pearlbeer]

How did it go?

[John A Arkansawyer]

How did it go?

I kicked the second song's ass! I did an okay job on Rock Solid. If I'd had another week to let it groove in to me, I'd've kicked its ass, too. It was good enough as it was, but I wanted it to be great. I owe that song a lot. I'm still working on it, to keep it in my repertoire. I'll have it by next week. And I did figure out a really nice way to intro it with the tambourine. I'd never realized how much nuance you can get out of one of those little fuckers.

[John A Arkansawyer]

I have no idea if I'm breaking some sort of rule here, other than the one about never covering material by someone better at everything than you are, but this is how it went Sunday:



It must be some sort of omen--a good one, I think--that the YouTube identifier for this is zYHybOO_0D4.