Title: A Place Inside My Heart
Artist: Bill Reid & The Fewer Sorrows Band
Released: 2010
Tracks:
- Hello In There
- Nobody Knows You When You’re Down & Out
- Autumn
- Drivin’ Home
- One Town at a Time
- Pick a Bale of Cotton
- Did You Hear John Hurt?
- Hoochie Coochie Man
- Jelly Jelly
- Talkin’ Junebug Blues
- A Place Inside My Heart
- Good Night, Moon (Lullaby for June)
Autumn (Ballad) was written for a friend of mine, about his first serious girlfriend. After all that trouble (and some exciting exploits from Minnesota to Oklahoma when we were all too young and stupid to know better), she dumped him. He recovered, went on to much better things (including Mardell), and got pretty famous in his chosen field. In retrospect, the song’s the best part of that memory. On stage, it is quiet and simple, not a song for outlaw bars. Here’s to Eric, and to Raye, wherever she may be.
Drivin’ Home (Country) was written during my Green (Army uniform) Period, while stationed at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, during the early 1970s, the rewritten for the new CD. I’d been drafted and was living by myself in an old trailer outside DeRidder, depressed, and missing everybody. It was probably raining, too. The truck was a pickup then, and the song was a little shorter. Then I had a chance to do a session with Chris Reeves, who likes honky tonk, and tried to impress him by making it sound like an over-the-road driver. I’m not sure that worked, but Chris, Ron’s fiddle and Stephen’s dobro dress it up for the country market on A Place Inside My Heart. We’ve also done a Nashville cut with Bill Hullett, Mike Douchette, Clayton Ivey, Glen Duncan, Tommy Wells, and Dow Tomlin.
One Town at a Time (Country/Satire) came about in 2000, when Elise and I were driving to New Mexico and decided to write the quintessential country song. It has a cheatin’ wife, whiskey, gambling, and a truck. This version, from our upcoming album Country Blues and Story Songs (2011) was cut in Nashville with the full band and J’Nae Fincannon’s background vocals. In case you want to check a map, the towns are along Interstate 35 just north of Austin, Texas.
Bill’s Jump (Jump Down, Pick a Bale of Cotton) (Blues/Zydeco/Cajun) is my arrangement loosely taken from a traditional southern field song. It’s a simple song that makes a great jam, the kind of thing you play for as long as you want, with everybody jumping in for solos and playing off each other. Nobody knows how to stop it once it takes off, so we just end up in a musical train wreck.