Blue Wednesday Morning

Something old, something, new, something borrowed, something blue...That was the template I set for my first four posts. The time has come for blue. Unfortunately I could not find the file for this piece, though I know it is saved somewhere. Instead I have typed this one from memory. The piece was written as a song. This is definitely my most performed piece, most notably at Bar 13 on numerous occasions. It contains a chorus and three basic stanzas, however I have written it here in the manner in which I have performed it. I open with the chorus in three refrains, and then repeat the two refrain chorus in between stanzas on the first pass, then hit all the stanzas in a chunk, finally breaking down on the final two lines of the final chorus. Maybe I'll record it someday.

"Blue Wednesday Morning" was one of the first pieces that I wrote after my father died. He died the day after Mother's Day, a Monday in 2002. His mother found him. I was notified that night, and I drove out to Ohio to be with the family. I did not grow up with this side of the family, so I was caught up in the mixed emotions of meeting family for the first time and losing my Dad. They were all quite religious and, to say the least, my father was not. I knew they would try to remember him with religious platitudes which had nothing to do with the man I knew. So I spent the week leading up to the funeral, working on a eulogy that would speak for my father as I knew him.

We buried Dad on a Friday. Dad was a man inclined to test the courage of his convictions, and on that day I found that I was too. People told me that they were moved by what I said that day. And though I was the only speaker whose words were not drenched in saccharine religiosity, I am inclined to believe them.

After the service at the mortuary, and the burial on a grassy knoll beneath a weeping willow in a cemetery along an old dirt road, mountains buffeting the horizon, we turned to a church basement for the reception. The family was a mix of Baptists and other denominations. This particular venue belonged to Born Agains. I thought it an odd place to remember my father, but I had not made the arrangements, and my father was at home among all sorts of people, even those with whom he disagreed. But my guard was up against the needling proselytizing for this as a time for the need of faith. My father did not live his life on his knees, and I refuse to remember him that way.

It was about this time that my father's cousin Lee, (my cousin also by the cousin math), approached me to offer his condolences, heavy as a bucket of holy water. "I am a pastor in my church back home, in West Virginia. And I spoke to your aunt Wilma, and she spoke with her pastor here, and they both agreed that it would be okay if I said a few words from scripture at the service here on Sunday. Are you going to be here at the service on Sunday?" he asked with expectation.

"I don't think I can stick around," I decided. "I have to get back to New York."

"Well, I wish you would stay." He nodded like my own personal Dr. Phil. "You need to find God."

The perfect Dad joke struck me, "I didn't know he was lost."

His was a nervous chuckle. "You're funny, just like your father. But, you do need to find God."

"I appreciate the offer, but I do have to get back to New York."

And so it happened that I spent the second week of the mourning process alone in my apartment. During the drive home with my mother, we stopped at a park that had been recommended to us. Now, the name Gavin means hawk, and my dad had always been fond of eagles and trains. While we stood on a bluff, overlooking a river that cut around the foot of a jutting mountainside, with a train track along its base, a hawk soared through the sky, swooping down to maybe twenty feet above my head as it glided in a semi-circle and then drifted across the river. Then a lonesome whistle blew, as a freight train of at least a hundred cars wound along the track below. While the rest of the family focused their grief upon the bible, it was in that hour upon the bluff that I began to forge my own sense of peace.

Once back in New York, I decided to take my mind off of my loss by focusing on a movie. Perhaps I could have chosen better. Perhaps I chose perfectly. I saw "The Road to Perdition", essentially the tale of a boy who loses his father just as he is beginning to really know him. For 117 minutes my eyes rivaled Niagara Falls. I left the theater knowing that I had to say something more for myself. I had to create something that spoke to my relationship with my father, something simple that I could remember and call upon whenever my emotions threatened to overwhelm me.

Late in night of my first Tuesday back in New York, I began writing. My first efforts were too much on the nose, in artful, inelegant, missing something. My Dad was a fan of blues, and jazz, and most of all bluegrass. I tried to emulate those styles, but it did not work. When I had first begun studying drums, back in grade school, my dad had given me two cassettes by swing drum legends Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. So it was only fitting, that in the wee early hours of that Wednesday morning, the piece that stuck would come to me with an upbeat, swinging tempo and lyric scheme.

I never did write down the music that was in my head, and I've since attempted the piece a cappella in other styles as well as swing. I've sung it on stage, and I've sung it to myself. I've sung it to mark the special occasions he and I shared, and I've sung it just because...I always miss him. And this is how I keep his image in my head. For anyone who has ever missed someone, this is "Blue Wednesday Morning"...



It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.



There were things said and left unsaid,

Ideas floating around in my head

Wish we had more time to spend

There's a hole in my heart that needs to be fed.



It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.



Daydreaming in the middle of the day

Daydreaming, wondering what we'd say

daydreaming my life away

The world is calling me to come out and play

Gotta take my dreams and be on my way.



It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.



Yellow buttercups growing on the lawn

Sunrise creeping up from the dawn

Red, red robins singing a song

Dew drops falling on the nose of a fawn

Life keeps rolling on, and on, and on, and on, and on...



It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.



There were things said and left unsaid,

Ideas floating around in my head

Wish we had more time to spend

There's a hole in my heart that needs to be fed.

Daydreaming in the middle of the day

Daydreaming, wondering what you'd say

Daydreaming my life away

The world is calling me to come out and play

Gotta take my dreams and be on my way

Yellow buttercups growing on the lawn

Sunrise creeping up from the dawn

Red, red robins singing a song

Dew drops falling on the nose of a fawn

Life keeps rolling on, and on, and on, and on, and on...



It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back the clock.

It’s a blue, blue, blue Wednesday Morning

And I am wanting to turn back....