Bill Camplin's "January Guitar"
[This column inaugurates a new feature on the Folk Music site: The Song Shop. Well-known songwriters will offer insights on individual songs they admire. We will supply or link to the lyrics and music. Shop, by the way, comes from the Anglo Saxon "scop" or maker. It's the word they used for the early bards and epic poets.
Andrew Calhoun has several albums of original and traditional songs to his credit, some on Flying Fish, others on Waterbug, which he founded. A longtime Chicago resident, Andrew now lives in Portland, OR]
"January Guitar"
by Bill Camplin
From the CD, Love Songs and Other Trios, (1999)
Billy Doet, aka Bill Camplin,is a Wisconsin singer-songwriter who, with Kitty Welch, runs a tavern/music venue in Fort Atkinson. Camplin's first recording in 20 years, Love Songs and Other Trios presents rich, deeply felt musical portraits and journeys - 12 tracks averaging nearly 6 minutes each. Let's look at Camplin's "January Guitar." There's a strikingly effective structure in the rhyme scheme, with two of the rhymes in each verse coming before (italicize before) the end of the line the real tour de force coming in the second verse where syllable 3 of "computations" rhymes with "say" from the previous line. Of course, like all good songs, you have to hear it sung to get the full effect [hear/download it in the Fenario song collection at mp3.com/fenario -ed.]
January Guitar
Can't expect to find
What now stands behind me
In soft shattered rooms
And just before the fall
I can hear me call you
Saying I'm leaving at noon
Yet it's kind of funny
When I get to thinking
I never really left you
Playing my guitar while January blows so cold
These words I try to sing
If only just to bring me
To the feelings I knew
But there isn't much to say
Amid the computations
Of a chance that I blew
Yet it's kind of funny
How many times I want you
Playing my guitar while January blows so cold
My feet are cold and damp
My tired eyes, they cramp me
Guess I'll call it a day ?
And awake again to know
I never really told you
What I wanted to say
Yet it's kind of funny
When I get to thinking
Of speaking to your shadow
Playing my guitar while January blows so cold
If sadness must be felt
I hope that it will melt me
From the cold state I'm in
My cats have gone to sleep
There's nothing here to keep me
From the warm dreams within
Yet it's kind of funny
When I get to thinking
How even on the warm nights
I'm playing my guitar while January blows so cold
There's a relationship that's ended, painfully, but certainly,
in conventional time and space, it's over and done with. Yet,
for the author, it can't end, it carries forward in heart and
mind, the way his lines roll forward even after the expected rhyme
that usually brings a line finality. With his second to last line
- "even on the warm nights" - Camplin releases
his metaphor to the wind, a moment at once subtle and surprising.
"January Guitar" is as much an exploration of time and memory as it is a song of loss. Which makes it, unlike countless songs written on the same subject, a work of art.
-Andrew Calhoun [AWaterbug@aol.com]