I was born in Northeast Arkansas in 1947, two years after the end of WWII. That picture of a bunch of old men on a bench was taken while I was a kid growing up there. I knew some of those old guys and I remember the photographer. It's the delta and I picked my first cotton at age eight. I disliked it intensely and preferred chopping to picking. At least if you have a sharp hoe in your hand, you can do something about a cottonmouth, need be. Not to mention that damn sack. There was an old country store out toward Caraway that would make you a cold cut sandwich and carried Nu Grape and chocolate sodas and had a huge oak tree in front where we would park in the dirt parking lot and lay back in the truck bed or sit on the fender and smoke cigarettes and talk and rest.

First guitar was at seventeen, a birthday present from my dad. I was sitting in the armchair watching tv when he came through the door with a load of clothes on hangers in one hand and a good sized, flat cardboard box in the other. He said, "Here you are, Boy, Happy Birthday!". I loved my dad. I loved the guitar. Ten dollars at the pawn shop in Blytheville. I sat for hours just wondering at the sounds it produced and two or three weeks later he came in and I was in the same armchair playing with the guitar and watching tv and he tossed me a Mel Bay Primer, an Andre Segovia Intro to Guitar and a pitch pipe and said,"Here Boy, tune that thing up and play me some music". A year later I played my first gig on a Silvertone guitar and an Montgomery Ward amp. There was a club up in the Missouri bootheel that we called The Bootheel until somebody renamed it The American Club during the Viet Nam war. It had once been a filling station. We played where the auto bay had been, big enough for two racks. A lot of the people would walk in across the fields in their workboots and bring a bottle for setups. Jerry Lee Lewis would occasionally barnstorm through and play at a club across the highway and up a dirt road called The Hanger where they were uptown because they had a piano. It was also very dangerous and the locals, even the tough ones, knew to stay away. All that notwithstanding, as a honky tonk musician you could do no wrong if you knew Whole Lotta Shakin, and/or Great Balls of Fire. By this time, The Green Green Grass of Home was a must-know as was High Heel Sneakers and so on. I played through college. There was a place called King's Capri out of Swifton where a guy named Bob King kept live music alive and well and was always looking for a band. I played there whenever I could scrape together a drummer and a bass player, but I was a college kid and Friday and Saturday twice a month was all I could go if I wanted a social life on the weekends at all. Then a band out of Jonesboro called Homegrown (subtle, no?) became the house band and started packing the house four nights a week. I knew then that things were changing on the honky tonk scene of Northeast Arkansas/Southeast Missouri. It was not long after that I went into the Navy for three years and four and a half months. I told my dad when I left to try to sell my electric guitar because I believed that kind of life was behind me. He didn't.

More to come.

Here are the words to a few of my songs:

“Cocaine Road” has received the most internet plays so far. I wrote it for an ad on TAXI, the online A&R company most of you songwriters are familiar with. This movie producer wanted an alternative country song filled with sex, drugs and violence to end a fiery closing scene in an indie movie that was in production. The song was approved and forwarded, with others of course, for consideration by the studio. I haven’t heard from them yet, but I got a cool little “Blue Noir” number out of the deal. Here are the words. Enjoy.

COCAINE ROAD

@2008 Gene Reid   

Verse 1:

I hate you and I love you said Delilah to her pimp

She shot him in the back once, now he walks with that limp

She was screaming at her mother when the police came along

she fought against those handcuffs, dropped her stash and she was gone.

 

Chorus:

Now she’s pacing in the drunk tank, far from her humble abode.

I’m inclined to be hateful, not grateful for this load,

you can feel their eyes upon you

runnin’ down that cocaine road.

 

Verse 2:

He was smearing on her lipstick that Sunday she was out

She stumbled in and caught him and she kissed him on the mouth

She begged him to have sex with her until the morning light

with her girlfriend and her webcam shooting pornos in the night

 

Chorus:

Now their rollin’ in the money, far from their humble abode.

I’m inclined to be hateful, not grateful for this load,

you can feel their eyes upon you

runnin’ down that cocaine road.

 

(INSTRUMENTALS)

 

Verse 3:

He was smoking in the doorway of a seedy hotel room

when a meth lab in the basement sent Delilah to her doom.

She was tall, lean and sexy like a sophomore in heat

in her new white cotton panties, runnin’, burnin’ down the street.

 

Chorus:

Now she’s lying on the morgue slab, far from her humble abode

I’m inclined to be grateful, not so hateful for this load,

you can feel their eyes upon you

runnin’ down that cocaine road.

(END)

The slide work was done with a Takamine six string and a ceramic slide. The guitar is in standard tuning and the slide is worn on my pinkie.

The rhythm/lead part is a funky, 70’s soul type of riff, with the solo being more a matter of which strings are muted, rather than which ones which are plucked.

 

 Eternity In Blue

Eternity in Blue is the second most often played song on my web page right now and it's a favorite with my friends here in Little Rock who come and see me play out now and then. Here are the words:

Eternity in Blue

copyright 2008 Gene Reid

Snow falls on the pages of my story like a book left on the lawn

buried deep beneath the winter’s glory, ‘til the ink has run and gone

 

I tried to ask you for an evening, still I passed my time alone.

It’s so hard to see yourself stay leaving with a voice that turns to stone

 

 

Chorus:

What if now is the last time around

what if it’s true and it’s the last time through?

What if now is the last time around,

will I do eternity in blue?

 

 

The sage needs the restless earth to sleep on, while the lovers learn to sing

These tears cry themselves for ground to weep on. A bird is waiting for his wings.

 

Chorus

 

Solo

 

Snow falls on the pages of my story like a book left on the lawn

buried deep beneath the winter’s glory, ‘til the ink has run and gone

Chorus

Finis

 

After a bout with cancer at thirty three, I ran pell mell through the great guru forest by moonlight, hounded and pursued by the hound of heaven, convinced the Truth was at hand. I usually introduce Eternity In Blue by talking about the theory of eternal recurrence, which says that when you die, you don't go to heaven and you're not reincarnated and so on, but rather, you come back and live the same life over. And over and over until you get it right. ("Groundhog Day", remember?).

The line about being left on the lawn was inspired by an old Lonzo and Oscar song called "Dear John" in which a woman writing a dear john letter says "Dear John... my love for you has died like grass upon the lawn", and the jilted lover replies, "Died like grass on the lawn; now ain't that a dandy line!"

Eternity in Blue was originally a soft folk song played on acoustic guitar. Playing out in public, however, led to the discovery that people didn't listen to soft folk songs. But when my old band "Little Rock's Metrognomes of Love" changed it to a reggae beat and added ska and electric lead parts, people began to listen and hear the words even while they were partying. I'm not pleased with my current recording, but a fan who likes the song encouraged me to post it as soon as I could and I'm glad I did. It's a work in progress, as are we all and I will eventually do an unplugged version.

Zen poets generally write two poems of major significance in their time; a death poem and an enlightenment poem. This was probably my death poem at the time.

Enlightenment is said to come in waves; sometimes sudden and abrupt, other times gradually unfolding. 

 

 Where The Men have gone. (aka the house of blue light)

Once I was invited to speak at a local retirement high rise on "Depression in the Elderly". There were nineteen women and one man who attended. At first I thought there were no men because men weren't interested in topics like Depression and were probably dropping a fishing line or out on the golf course or napping, but I was wrong. There were no men because these women had outlived them. This song was inspired by those who are truly "left behind" and is dedicated to all of us who might live long enough.

Where The Men Have Gone (aka the house of blue light)

@2008 Gene Reid

 

Sadie walks these streets behind a grocery cart

She’s old and she’s feeble and she’s not too smart.

Thirty years ago she thought she had it all

dancin’ til tomorrow ‘neath a glittering ball

 

Oh oh oh oh oh… oh oh oh oh oh oh.

 

Mary sold her home when her husband died

moved to a condo in a big high rise.

Now she rides to WalMart in the condo van

with fifteen women, not a single man.

 

CHORUS:

Oh oh in the middle of the night

I was once Miss Molly at the house of blue light.

Out by the ocean at the break of dawn

on her way to the place where the men have have gone.

 

Oh oh oh oh oh… oh oh oh oh oh oh

 

On her sixtieth birthday, Emily Ann

went to Vegas with a forty five year old man.

Ten years later, she still looks back

driving to church in her Cadillac.

 

CHORUS:

Oh oh in the middle of the night

I was once Miss Molly at the house of blue light.

Out by the ocean at the break of dawn

on her way to the place where the men have have gone.

 

 

BRIDGE:

You can rock the cradle, you can sing the blues

but you’re still less than half of the things you choose.

Believe your lover was heaven sent

and all the while where you are

is pro’bly just an accident.

 

 

Well, there was one man down at the senior café

and he thought he was a profit on Judgement Day

‘cuz he had women all around him, waiting to dance

desparately desiring one more chance.

 

CHORUS:

Oh oh in the middle of the night

I was once Miss Molly at the house of blue light.

Out by the ocean at the break of dawn

on her way to the place where the men have have gone.

 

 Kids love this song and I love it especially when people sing along on the chorus and the oh oh oh parts and reach for that "Island harmony" feel. It is truly groovy.