Score Demos
As previously mentioned, Mark recorded video demos of the songs as soon as he finished them,
both to share with John and ascertain that he didn’t forget what he’d done. As such, excellent performances
(correct keys, polished singing, sterling playing) were never the goal, although it’s interesting, even with some later lyric/melody/harmony changes, how much of the final versions of the songs are contained herein.
Here are Mark’s notes on those demos, which are presented in the order they were written and recorded.
HOE-DOWN IN THE BUNKHOUSE
As mentioned before, the script John sent me contained an origin story video, with four of the Buckeroos’ “hits” listed, one of which was Hoe-Down At The Bunkhouse; that title triggered this song, the tone of which - sincere but naughty, double-entendred without winks, a serious spoof - immediately set the tone for most of the rest of the score; as I mention in the video, I very much doubted this was where John intended his title to go.
THE DRUNKARD COWBOY
(aka THE WHOOPSIE DOOPSIE SONG)
With this second composition, I employed a technique I’d never utilized before, but which ended up informing fully a third of the score - take an existing song, write new lyrics to the rhythm-and-rhyme template, then compose completely original melody and chords; the model here is Old Chisholm Trail, which I knew from teaching guitar, and while I didn’t change the simple I-V-I chords, the melody is the inverse of the original; the subject matter, of course, delves slightly deeper into the downside of herding cattle than Chisholm; this song (and the compositional technique) also furthered my goal of writing a score that would lovingly evoke (and slightly spoof) classic cowboy songs.
THE CANYON YODELER
John wanted a yodel song, and, of course, my naughty mind traveled immediately to this clip from the Robert-Towne-penned-Jack-Nicholson-starring The Last Detail; did Towne create this euphemism?; I’ve no idea, but I seem to have been the only one involved in this project who knows/knew the term; of note is the phrase “broncin’ buck” in the lyric - of course, it should have been “buckin’ bronc”, but it wasn’t until the fabulous Gina Hanzlik (whose charming clip of her working out her yodels is likewise included herein - learn more about her at ginahanzlik.com) recorded her lead vocal that I noticed the unconscious word reversal “mistake”; Gina thought perhaps I was working another double-entendre (like the “buck” in the second verse of I’m A Young Cowpunk [Whoop Ti Do], which was written six songs later), but I confessed such was never my intention - as one can hear here, from the very beginning I thought “broncin’ buck” was correct - go figure (Hey! Just realized, the other day, whilst performing "American Pie", that the second verse contains the lyric "...I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck..." - that must be whence the phrase came - hilarious that I needed all this time [two years! the Lord works in mysterious ways...] for the realization to land); this is the first composition to utilize a melodic downward octave jump (“…I love it when my BAY-BEE…”), which became something of a score motif, reappearing in “Saddle Tramps” (“…Always the BRIDES-MAID…”), and “The Cowboy Blessing (Until We Might Meet Again)” (“…May your blessings ride BESIDE-YOU…”) - this was similarly unconscious on my part.
DEAD HORSE
This song was written in 1976 as a languid Texas waltz, and I thought the shaggy-dog subject matter was right on the money for this score; turning the tempo from an easy 3/4 to a hopping cut-time two-step made all the difference - I certainly prefer this version to its 44-year-old antecedent, and am very much tickled by how the waltzing origins of the song remain with the preponderance of half-note triplets in the melody (unintentional, that’s just how I sang the song); finally, although John (V) was mildly disappointed/relieved, this song is about (and dedicated to) Ann Ballinger, Katie Callahan, and John MacPherson.
SADDLE TRAMPS
So this is the second of John’s titles from the origin story video that I tackled - how could I not go down the prostitution path once again?; I like all the rhymes I concocted for “tramps” and “ride”…; by the way, John has a knack of providing inspirational titles - five in this score, and numerous others in one of our previous collaborations, Tinseltown.
LONG HORN BOOGIE
Amongst the ten songs John had inserted into the original script was Cow Cow Boogie, which I didn’t know, although I believe I’d heard the title before somewhere; I found an amazing clip on YouTube - typical western movie bar scene, with the poker players, bartender, pianist, dance hall girls, et cetera et alia (right out of Dead Horse’s Red Eye Saloon), except that everyone was African-American; then, starting to sing from offscreen, in comes the great Dorothy Dandridge, dressed like Dale Evans, and Cow Cow Boogie itself is a weird conglomeration of a cowboy lament and a Harlem-reefer-madness number; all I kept was the bovine subject matter, scoured the internet for amusing lyric ideas (only the first and last verses are all mine), and went from there.
THE COWBOY BLESSING
(UNTIL WE MIGHT MEET AGAIN)
This was written to replace (of course) Dale Evans’ immortal Happy Trails as the last song in the show, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results; I started with the traditional “Irish Blessing”, and the song pretty much wrote itself; I was pleasantly surprised when the first two verses were then followed by three choruses and/or bridges and/or interludes (I’ve no idea what to call them) that are through-composed - I love when this happens; there are two video versions herein - the first, original rendition contained slightly-too-obvious references to and quotes from Red River Valley, and I think the final version (which I recorded for a friend almost a month later) benefits enormously from their exclusion and rewrites; this was, seven compositions in, the first truly serious song written for the show.
DAMNED VULTURES IN THE SKY
John wanted a Ghost Riders In The Sky sort of spooky, minor key song, and once again inspirationally suggested the title; I utilized the same method of composition that I employed in The Drunkard Cowboy (aka The Whoopsie Doopsie Song) = I wrote my lyrics (tongue deeply in cheek) to the rhyme-and-rhythm template of Ghost Riders, then composed the new and original melody and chord changes.
I'M A YOUNG COWPUNK
(WHOOP TI DO)
And…I did it again; John actually had Velvet sing I’m An Old Cowhand in the original script, which frankly didn’t make much sense, but I was provided the inspiration to use that classic as a template; but this number took some time to come to full fruition in terms of feel, as indicated by the three transmogrifying video demo versions of this song, recorded over the course of ten hours (the first two only seven minutes apart, so I immediately knew the initial pass wasn’t on the money), included herein = in the first, I’m still trying to utilize Cowhand’s lope, which doesn’t work at all; in the second, I’m moving to more of a rock rendition, but still unsuccessfully attempting to elongate the final words with their hard “k” endings (e.g., the first verse’s “punk-drunk-spunk”), and not until I started cutting short those words did I reach the final and correct syncopated musical feel; the idea of the Buckeroos echoing the gist of each line didn’t come until much later, when I started thinking about vocal arrangements.
UP TO MEMPHIS
John had requested a “Jackson”- styled female-male duet ("…We got married in a fever…”); Memphis was on my mind (particularly John Hiatt’s terrific “Memphis In The Meantime”), and I toyed with the idea of a long-time married couple going up to Tennessee’s other Music City to rekindle old flames, but when I had the thought of Elvis leaving Tupelo and moving up to Memphis…well, this selection really wrote itself; as Guy Clark sang, “…Sometimes you write the song/sometimes the song writes you…” - with ten songs coming in five days, more than a few of them wrote me; I told John we probably shouldn’t expect any productions in Mr Presley’s hometown; this, the tenth and last of the initial five-day batch of compositions, is the second serious, non-spoofy song composed for the show.
LAST TRAIN TO WILCOX
So those first ten songs were written in five days, and a week later I decided I wanted to write the last two songs named in that origin video so we could include excerpts of all four therein; who knew we’d like ‘em well enough to stick ‘em in the show?; for this one, I googled all the Texan towns I could find and wrote the lyrics accordingly (ironically, Wilcox is the only town that’s not in Texas); I knew from the beginning that “…take the last train to Wilcox…” would melodically copy The Monkees’ Last Train To Clarksville…; unfortunately, ten verses and eleven choruses proved to be way too long (which didn’t concern me at the point of composition as this song was only going to appear as an excerpt in the video), but then reducing the verses and choruses by half and utilizing what remained for the encore/bows proved perfect; the CD contains the unabridged version as a bonus track.
GOOSEBERRY ROAN
The final song I wrote; Tennessee Stud was an obvious inspiration, and I recycled and expanded the story from another mid-70s song of mine entitled Renegade Romeo; John had also requested a “weird chords” song a’la Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds, and I was happy to utilize some of those chord changes (specifically, the first three in the chorus) to accommodate; this is the third, and final, completely serious song in the score.