THE CLOSER YOU ARE

            One of the perks of being a cabana boy is that I get to provide poolside service anywhere the boss happens to be. Right now Sabrina is attending a conference in Vienna, so I am duty bound to tag along. Today she’s at the conference, so I am blah blah blogging in a park recovering from my museum hangover. It’s a beautiful day and I can smell both sausage and flowers,  which go surprisingly well together. They say "danke schoen" here, so I have this wicked Wayne Newton ear worm I can't seem to get rid of.

If I may ask a personal question...

Would you dance with this guy?        

        Don’t let the facial hair fool you. This is the Gene Kelly of the Blue Danube himself. Pretty bohemian looking for a waltzer, don’t you think? My favorite version of his greatest waltz hit is “The Danube Isn’t Blue, It’s Green” by the legendary Spike Jones and his City Slickers. I had some of his stuff on 78s when I was a kid, and I’m still a big fan. All wild, cartoonish parodies; Weird Al meets Bugs Bunny. Here’s another takeoff, The Black and Blue Danube from Spike’s TV show. Great stuff.

         When I wrote about Gravedigger’s Boy, I mentioned my love of composing in ¾ time and waltzing too. What better place to share a waltz than Vienna? Of course, the Viennese waltz is a lot faster and way out of my league. I prefer the big, slow, Titanic-nautical-roll. It suits my body type. Besides, I don’t have the duds to dance like an Austrian.

         So this waltz I’m posting is called The Closer You Are. I wrote it a while ago while Cabana Boss was off on a work trip. Sometimes we travel together and sometimes we travel separately. We give each other room to move around that way. So I was missing her when this song popped out. And the bridge, “Sometimes we fight…” is just a big fat lie.

        This tune is a lot different from the Americana style downloads I’ve posted so far. It was recorded with Tom Prasada Rao at his Tofu Bar in Richardson, Texas several years back. At the time I was writing more singer/songwriter type stuff. I got hung up on the post production (developed a bad case of self-produced paralysis) and never commited these tunes to CD. So I plan to share a lot of them in their not-quite-finished-in-my-mind form. “Nature in the raw is seldom mild.”

         I love all the players on this cut. Tom PR played that vibe-y tremolo electric guitar. Cary Cooper sang the background vocals. Jagoda played drums. And my Browngrass brother Bill Kahler played the sax solo. You should grab your sweetie and dance to this one.