Here weÕll post songs as
they emerge.
IÕd been thinking about
trying to write a hymn since early 2006. Hymn singing in church was one of my
first exposures to group music growing up. So I had bought some musicology
books on American hymns and spiritual music in early 2006, leafed through them
and then sort of put it in the back of my mind until Fall 2007. About that time
Viv Nesbitt of Art of the Song had asked me if I wouldnÕt write up something
about how music had enhanced my life in the past couple of years (weÕd been
talking about recent choral tours to Europe and singing around at folk open mikes). Pete Kennedy closed one of our dream
workshops with a Woody Guthrie reading where Woody was talking about the Word
that encompassed all words. Suddenly the idea for this hymn crystallized. It
just took me a while to learn it and work out a solo guitar accompaniment. Studio
Recording Draft Nov 2007
In June 2006 a local
healthy (and yummy!) foods store not to be named announced it would suspend the
sale of live lobsters. In
captivity, they argued, the lobsters werenÕt reaching their full potential as
beings. Some local chefs
thought this silly, witness a Globe article at that time. I personally think
that lobsters and humans are involved in the same cosmic cycle of reciprocal
need and respect that weÕve seen in Plains Native Americans and buffalo. I also
have heartily enjoyed every lobster IÕve ever eaten. Out of this conflict, I
thought, a song could arise, but I
needed an angle. One night I had
it: What could they do with the ones they hadnÕt sold when the ban
started? IÕm happy to report they
did the right thing. There are
still 48 lobsters living at the store in Cambridge; this is their story. Copyright Rick Drost, All Rights
Reserved, Boston Hills Music, 2007. Enjoy. The song is dedicated to my Aunt Betty, who encouraged
me to write this song when I told her
the idea (over a family reunion lobster and steak dinner on Lake Erie
last summer), and to her (late)
sisters Carol (my mother) and Jane, all of whom enjoy a good song, a good
laugh, and, of course, Lobster, corn, rice and salad in season.
At a Passim Open Mike (you
now get to do two songs!) Steve Friedman caught this performance of one of my
earliest songs, Wyethstown, written from the standpoint of a woman coming of
age when they were building railroads along the ridges of rural Western New
York in the middle of the 1800s, I imagined. A hundred years later, as kids, we ran along the old
railroad right-of-way most weekends, looking down at the sun on the meadows,
silos, and highways below; this song has been a fave in my family ever since I
wrote it.
ItÕs dream number 1 on
ÒTwelve Dared DreamsÓ, my album on cdbaby.
Play Wyethstown Live at Passim (mp3)
A valentine finished in January 2006 to our beloved swans in
the Boston Public Garden, known as ÒRomeoÓ and Juliet. It also goes out to any
bipeds, feathered or otherwise, who give and take in a permanent relationship;
and to the designers of our magnificent green spaces around Boston, who had in
mind, IÕm sure, the serenity that Juliet and Juliet inspire. My first song, I
think, with some redeeming social value. Enjoy. IÕm told to say, however,
Juli and Romy, All Rights Reserved, Boston Hills Music, 2006
HereÕs an old song from when
I lived in Providence and was in my wordy perriod. I wrote it to amuse myself
when I kept putting myself in the position of getting stood up
Some attitude is apparent.
This song came out of a Bob Franke songwriting workship a
couple of years ago. It got me started writing again. ItÕs dream number 10 on ÒTwelve Dared DreamsÓ