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J. Dale Walker - Trench Foot Memoir

from Round 21, Week 3 by Monday Morning 3AM Music Club

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about

I've always been interested in the two great wars of the 20th century, so this continues the theme of my contribution last week. However, this tune is about a character's reaction to his experience in WWI.

I tried to stay true to the musical idiom of the time. There's elements of ragtime (stride style piano, a glaringly obvious II V turnaround in the verses, chromatic passing tones in the hook) and "old time religion" (the progression in the chorus and hook is a bastardization of "Amazing Grace"). The character has PTSD, but since there wasn't a word for it at the time he refers to his trauma as "glass battle scars." He's writing a letter to a woman with whom he'd had a youthful dalliance before the war.

The tune is okay. I feel pretty "meh" about it. I do like the lyric though. I'm doing my best to focus on my lyric writing this round (as I feel it's my greatest weakness) rather than worrying about musical content.

The recording was done in a couple of takes, one for piano and one for vocal with minimal editing (the edits are almost exclusively the removal of audible breaths because, yet again, I essentially had to whisper the thing because everyone is asleep and I ain't tryin' to wake up two toddlers at midnight on a Wednesday).

Edit: Go ahead and call me out if this is cheating, but since I had some extra time to record the vocal again without being a bother to the kids volume-wise I quickly did it again because I felt the whisper version was so bad it was distracting.

lyrics

Nigh on four years in a nowhere man's land
Nothing to show but a holy left hand
Left my poor nerves where we made our last stand
Left all the strong bits on the fields of Amiens

Maybe it's you but it’s probably me
Stole all your kisses in batty belfries
Pray this will find you cross time's stormy seas
Or past pearly gates where you'll recognize me

With porcelain courage and rage in our face
The Somme Light brigade was forgotten by grace
Both friend and foe shared their emptiness gaze
The world's bonny princes set Europe ablaze

Saw you in church but you didn't know me
Decided right then that I should set you free
A lifetime has past by since 1914
I'll have to make do with hearts carved into trees

Maybe it's you but it’s probably me
Stole all your kisses in batty belfries
Pray this will find you cross time's stormy seas
Or past pearly gates where you'll recognize me

Always will love you from quiet afar
Little remains behind glass battle scars
Always you will be my lovely lodestar
Shining your light in a trench foot memoir

Long are the shadows cast by our old sins
No dear I don't think you'll see me again
We'll never grow old but were far too young then
Mortars and gas have worn my soul too thin

Maybe it's you but it’s probably me
Stole all your kisses in batty belfries
Pray this will find you cross time's stormy seas
Or past pearly gates where you'll recognize me

credits

from Round 21, Week 3, released December 17, 2018

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Monday Morning 3AM Music Club Winston Salem, North Carolina

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