The Story Of My Life
The lyric sheets in my notebook of old songs are seldom dated. This one is: 5/31/79. I was still living in Portland and at that time the story of my life was going nowhere. I was in between chapters and having writer's block. I moved to Idaho a few months after that and started a whole new volume.
If you're reading this before listening to the song, or deciding to download it, don't worry. This song isn't really the story of my life. The title line is "Will the story of my life be fit to read?" I was having serious doubts in 1979.
I resurrected the lyric a reently and guessed at the melody I might have had in mind when I wrote it. I think it has turned out to be a very classic bluegrass song, or what they might call old timey country. I don't have sufficient prowess on mandolin and banjo to add the proper bluegrass accompaniment, so I just kept it simple with rhythm and lead guitar, bass and brush drum.
I've been wanting to try a song with just bass and brush snare rhythm, thinking this is really all most of my songs need for back-up tracks. No matter how steady I try to be doing the vocal and guitar tracks, it's hard to sustain a rhythm section groove when adding the rhythm section later. So I played with a simple click track on the drum machine and then recorded over that with real snare drum brushes.
The recording was made in the middle of November, 2000. The guitar on both the rhythm and lead tracks is my Gibson LG-1. It was miked with an AT 4033. Vocal mic was the Sennheiser 421.