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Doug Davis - Cigarettes Etc.

from Round 24, Week 8 by Monday Morning 3AM Music Club

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about

A rarity for me: I actually completed the lyric draft before I sat down to write the music. That's usually a good sign for me.

Back in the 80's, when I moved to Winston-Salem to go to school, you could still catch the scent of fresh tobacco in the air, over at Whitaker Park, and on a cool, damp, October day, it could be particularly overwhelming. I come from a family of tobacco farmers, and that's a sweet, sweet smell to me. Winston was still flush with money in those days, and it seemed that the future, as Mr. Petty might say, was wide open. And I was a naive college kid with no clue what my own future might hold. This is not an autobiographical song, but I can fully understand how the narrator here, in older age, can be brought back to a more hopeful time by a whiff of that "Winston-Salem perfume."

lyrics

well, I never was a smoker
not so much you’d say I was
but this Winston-Salem perfume
always gave me such a buzz
and Tobacco Town ain’t nothing more than
history’s broken name
like Cleopatra, Waterloo, or any ash
that once was flame

and it’s such a nasty habit
all this trying to recall
‘cause nothing good can ever come from
trading shot for cannonball
but here I am, still wondering where you are
and did you ever get it right
when I smell the smoke of a cigarette
on a cool October night

the boldest hickory, true and mighty
from a bitter nut begins
but I swear my aim was true
in simpler days, with simpler sins
when I watched you in the dusklight
and the coil of crimson glow
and I tried so hard to picture
where our autumn blaze would blow

and it’s such a nasty habit
all this trying to recall
‘cause nothing good can ever come from
trading shot for cannonball
but here I am, still wondering where you are
and did you ever get it right
when I smell the smoke of a cigarette
on a cool October night

and now they’ve shut down all the factories
and the auction house gone dark
and as for me, I must confess
I’ve gone and lit my last good spark
and I pray you’re out there somewhere
with a fire yet in the chill
but I am childlike, out of season
trying to trace that fragrance still

and it’s such a nasty habit
all this trying to recall
‘cause nothing good can ever come from
trading shot for cannonball
but here I am, still wondering where you are
and did you ever get it right
when I smell the smoke of a cigarette
on a cool October night

credits

from Round 24, Week 8, released October 14, 2019

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Monday Morning 3AM Music Club Winston Salem, North Carolina

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