Hello Friends,
The 22nd song in the Plant Songs series is entitled Tracks.
This one is a melody and bassline / countermelody written over the 12-bar blues form. It’s been awhile since I’ve written a 12-bar blues. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the 12-bar blues is a ubiquitous form that’s used in jazz, blues, rock, and more. There are probably more 12-bar blues compositions than any other form in the jazz canon. It’s kind of a fun familiar form that musicians know and understand well. Remember in Back To The Future when Marty sat in with Marvin Berry’s band at the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance in 1955? Before they started playing Johnny B Goode he said to the band, “Alright, this is the blues riff in B. Watch me for the changes, and try to keep up.” He was talking about the 12-bar blues form. It was actually in B-flat. I wonder if it was written as “B-flat” in the script and he messed up.
I digress. Since the 12-bar blues is so common, my instinct is to mess with it a little. We don’t need another plain old blues, so I was thinking “be a little weird” when I wrote this melody. I would site the music of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and Warne Marsh as an influence. Their songs had such odd phrasing and odd note choices, and are so fun. The weirdness of my melody carried into the improvisation section, at least that was my intention. I didn’t want to go into a “normal” version of the blues after my weird melody. Part of the problem of the 12-bar blues in jazz circles is that many musicians play the same bebop or post-bop lines over any 12-bar blues, disregarding the themes that the melody contained. In my opinion it’s a missed opportunity when someone plays Thelonious Monk’s Misterioso and then plays a solo that doesn’t take that amazing thematic melody into account.
The snowfalls we’ve had this winter have provided me with some interesting animal track viewing. There have been several times that I’ve been breaking the trail on Mount Beacon and have been able to see lots of animal tracks. I’ve seen tracks of deer, squirrel, mouse, vole, and either fox or coyote. Possibly bobcat too. And after the snow last Sunday evening, our yard was full of all kinds of tracks on Monday morning. I think there were kitty-cat, squirrel, raccoon, fox, and skunk tracks. We get a lot of animal activity in our yard because of our chicken operation. I dump all our kitchen scraps, and the scraps of several neighbors in our chicken yard. During a cold winter the ground freezes, the scraps freeze and it tends to pile up a little and it can attract critters. During the warm season if the scraps accumulate, I can pile them all up into compost piles and that keeps it from turning into a critter party.
Animal tracks really have nothing to do with this song. But the active nature of the melody might reflect wild animal activity enough so that when I was scratching my head trying to think of a title, my recent sightings of animal tracks came to mind. I hope you enjoy Tracks.