Collaboration

As songwriters we collaborate with everything in the known universe. (I like that phrase “the known universe.” It leads me on so many flights of fancy.) We collaborate with the end of winter (George Harrison) or an old dancer drying out in a New Orleans jail cell (Jerry Jeff Walker) or a lost lover found again in a taxi cab some rainy San Francisco night (Harry Chapin). We collaborate with girls who break our hearts or half-empty bottles, or hesitant syringes, the poet's sleepless night. We collaborate with city streets and lonesome highways, a wound that cannot heal, a train sound in the distance. We draw from the faces of poverty and joy, a story of injustice, a message of hope, a close encounter. And most times we don't give these collaborators any credit. Such is the human ego.

I have collaborated with many people, places and things in this known universe and perhaps even beyond it. But my best collaborations have been with good friends who share my love of songs and music. A week from today I travel back to Michigan to spend some time with three of these friends and I'm certain more songs will come of it, if not in a week then in a year. Or two. Or five. We might write about those stars that whisper high above Three Rivers, or what might lurk behind the trees there, or perhaps some notion we've mystically shared. With songwriting you just never know. It happens at it's own speed.

I am happy because of this upcoming journey. I haven't written a song in a long time.

A few years back I gave a poem to one of these friends (Joe Peters) and he turned into a song which ended up on his Big Fat Liar album.

Rain is the color of this well of souls

who speak my words, she cries

and lays her tears where my shoulder would be

had I known I could be needed...

Let me try again.

Rain has no color, and love is a

well of souls who cry for mercy

in dark water, in hopeless night, in

desperate wonder at the way it cuts

my heart, the way my blood is fire

at your sound, the sudden song of you,

he whispered, knowing the risk was

great and mercy is a fish that

swims upstream...

Let me try once more.

Rain is color -- you've seen it

flower, I know, the petals falling

gentle on the sidewalk,

breaking into shards.

My love is rain: I let it fall, shatter.

I was born without eyes, to feel my way

along the walls, sit in darkness, wait alone.

You've seen me there, heard me,

a wishful sound, a penny thrown into

a well of souls, a cistern full of rain.

I've done similar collaboration with others, two of whom will be in Three Rivers next week (Bobby Pennock and Mj Bishop). I can't tell you now how many times I've sent words to Bobby and he turned them into a song, or sat in his den with our guitars, throwing lines at each other, then writing them down. Mj Bishop and I have sat together in her Nashville living room, drinking sangria and smoking cigarettes (well, I was the one smoking cigarettes), and wrote a song. (It was about longing, something every songwriter knows well.)

Anyway, wish us luck and I will wish you luck in return. This world the way it is – indeed the whole known universe – we all need all the luck we can get. And sangria. We'll be needing some of that as well.