Thing a Week 31: Just as Long as Me I wrote this song for a…

Thing a Week 31: Just as Long as Me

I wrote this song for a documentary a friend is working on about being tall (and in case he is reading this: yes, I certainly do owe him a phone call). Some people fake the funk, me, I fake the bluegrass. And this feller in this song, you see, he’s extremely tall and he would like to find a tall woman. I like the vocals and I’m pretty proud of the word play in the chorus, but I think this song could be much improved by the addition of a little fiddle – any bluegrass fiddle players out there?

PRESENT DAY JOCO SAYS: It would be interesting to track the “day late and dollar short” index of the songs week to week from the original Thing a Week against the same measurement for these Redux posts. I am late a lot! It’s touring that does it to me. Short bursts of travel preceded by a stretch of planning and followed by a period of recovery and catching up. It amounts to a black hole, a dark, timeless void where I cease to exist – I become merely a shadow that smells like an airplane and only wants to fall asleep in front of the hotel television. In case it isn’t clear (it isn’t), this post was meant to happen 6 days ago, so if I want to get back on schedule I will post again tomorrow. Blargh.

ANYWAY. This last week (that is to say, last Friday’s “this last week”) was when Hodgman’s Apple ads started running. I thought I was becoming famous, but what happened to John as a result of these ads was another thing entirely: TV famous, very different from Internet famous. It was thrilling to watch, and I was very happy for my friend. Did I really call Justin Long “the guy from Jeepers Creepers 2”? Yes, I did.

Those were heady days! Code Monkey Tshirts first went on sale this week at CafePress, the beginning of my merchandise empire. MySpace was still a thing. And I, well, I failed to write a new song. Just as Long as Me was from the reserve tank, I think that I may have added a verse and tweaked a lyric or two, but it was mostly a repurposing of something I had already made. No excuse this time. Maybe too busy, er, watching Apple ads? Dunno.

I would later acquire a fiddle part from some kind internet person – I can’t locate that post right now and am too lazy to keep looking. It helped a lot with the bluegrass flavor. You may be wondering if I play the banjo this quickly. The answer is yes, for short stretches of time, like Wile E. Coyote running in the air right before he falls off the cliff. Thanks to digital editing capabilities, it almost sounds like a guy playing the banjo.

The song is a little too gimmicky for my taste now, I’m not as interested in writing these kinds of songs as I once was. There are some good jokes in there though. And YE GODS do I love three part bluegrass harmony, I don’t know why exactly. It’s like, the way my brain is wired, bluegrass harmonies are a direct line to the very center of pure musical beauty to me. Sometimes just the sound of it makes me tear up. Probably a tumor.

I also wrote an Al Jolson style number about being tall for the same documentary, and likely I used the same jokes there too. And the same banjo. Not sure if he ever finished that thing, I should ask…

You can find more info on this song, a store where you can listen to everything, and also other stuff at jonathancoulton.com.