George Fox, impresario extraordinare, has made Mondays on Folly Beach a day not to dread but one to look forward to. His open mic Singer/Songwriter Soapbox, which features original works, is attracting nationally known artists such Sierra Hull, Joel Timmons, Sally George, and the poet Chuck Sullivan, who published in Esquire Magazine in the Seventies when Gordon Lish ruled that literary roost and introduced readers to the likes of Raymond Carver, Cynthia Ozick, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Richard Ford.
Here’s a clip of Chuck reading his poem “Juggler on the Radio” at the Soapbox on 8 November 2022.
One of the premier artists at Chico-Feo’s Singer/Songwriter open mic Mondays, Pernell McDaniel performs a wide range of originals. Whether he is singing about his beloved grandfather, star-crossed interracial couples, or the abundant goods available at Bert’s Market, his melodies and lyrics seamlessly meld into well-crafted crowd pleasers.
Here he is performing “The Ballad of Chris and Willy” on 19 September 2022.
The lyrics appear beneath the video.
Enjoy!
THE BALLAD OF CHRIS AND WILLY
On the other side of the tracks On the shady side of town Two young bucks worked a corner spot Sharing their love around Pimpin’ riffs and rhymes And layin’ down beats and tracks
Chris and Willy made their way Climbin’ each others backs Scrapin’ and scratchin’ A nd tryin’ to get ahead Where street cred and the dollar bill Was all the pride they had
And then the big time struck Like a lightning bolt And they got swept away in the fray Not knowin’ that their crooked paths Would cross again one day
Chorus
Yeah, Chris and Willy had a lifelong feud Kinda like they never had Nothin’ much better to do. But, Chris and Willy Never had a real fight Until a bald headed woman Came between ’em At the Oscar’s one night
Willy married a time or two And wound up with a chick named Jada. She was a swinger with alopecia. She was low hanging fruit for a hater.
Chris got rich on SNL And later on the silver screen. His money was green. But, he was an A-list star ‘Cause his jokes were all so mean. Then one night at the Oscar’s Willy had a nomination. And Chris was MC-ing center stage And tryin’ to be an aggravation. In a single lapse of judgement Chris joked about Jada’s scalp. And Willy stormed the stage And slapped the taste Out of Chris’s mouth! Tears filled Willy’s eyes As he reached his front row seat While Chris was tryin’ to keep his cool And checkin’ for loose teeth. Jada scanned the crowd Then beamed at Willy in adoration. But Willy couldn’t let it go Without one last indignation. In a voice that thundered Like the cannon fire When Sherman raped the South He said “Don’t let my wife’s name Come outa your fuckin’ mouth!”
Yeah, Chris and Willy had a lifelong feud Kinda like they never had Nothin’ much better to do. But, Chris and Willy Never had a real fight Until a bald headed woman Came between ’em At the Oscar’s one night
Generally, when I first listen to a song, I don’t pay much attention to lyrics. If I dig the melody and beat – as the boppers used to say on Bandstand – I’ll start paying closer attention to the words, and if the diction is clever or thought-provoking, all the better.
After all, it’s really rare to encounter lyrics that possess the compression and structural integrity of poetry, i.e., to find songs with words that can stand alone on a page and engage sans musical accompaniment.
My friend George Fox’s latest song – so new that it’s still untitled – comes close to accomplishing this rare feat. The song, which consists of three verses followed by a chorus, distills a lifetime in four-and-a-half minutes and does so employing diction, imagery, and structure that reinforce and embody the song’s central theme, what Andrew Marvell famously dubbed “time’s wingèd chariot.” George wrestles with the metaphysics of time, the illusive nature of past, present, and future, and how a lifetime passes [cliché alert] in the blink of an eye.
The song begins with a callous youth speeding through life in rural Orangeburg County, South Carolina:
Just eighteen, driving an old pickup truck, Joint in the ashtray and a bed full of luck. Running nowhere as fast as I can Down an Orangeburg County washboard road Not enough sense to take it slow. Rolling Stones singing “Street Fighting Man.”
Here, the theme of speed is introduced, and we have our first bit of compression in the allusion to the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” which melds the attitude of the the speaker in the Stones’ song with George’s narrator, both young men fueled by the fire of youthful exuberance.
What’s a poor boy to do but “run nowhere as fast as [he] can?”
The chorus shifts to the present, and again, we have speed, the idea of chasing “the dying light,” or as Marvell puts it in “To His Coy Mistress,” although “we cannot make our sun /Stand still, yet we will make him run.” Yet, in the last line, the speaker comes to the realization it’s always now, that the past and future only exist in the present and meaning lies in perspective, depending on where “you’re standing.”
Right outside of your window, just outside your door, Everything is waiting for you To fall into the night and chase the dying light. There’s no need to be gentle. Sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. All depends on where you’re standing. I stand before you now, and I see it written in in the clouds, All that was and is and could be is now.
In the video below you can check out the first verse and chorus from a live performance at Chico Feo’s Monday Night Singer/Songwriter Soapbox, which George emcees. The song is a work-in-progress, and for me, it’s thrilling to see it evolve on stage, as George experiments with phrasing and gestures.
In the second verse, the middle verse, the narrator finds himself suddenly middle aged, “thirty-three/With two little boys sitting on my knee” and has come to know “how love is made,” but swoosh, suddenly, with the days having flown by “like a midnight train,” he looks down to see, not his sons, but his granddaughter Eliza Jade.
Turned around and I was thirty-three With two little boys sitting on my knee, And I realized how love is made. The days flew by like a midnight train. The years fell on me like the pouring rain. Now I look down and see Eliza Jade.
The last stanza arrives like a melancholy last act, with “second guesses, another last chance, and one more shot.” Once again, the radio is playing, not “Street Fighting Man,” but “a brand new song” saying “the same old thing” but “still get[ting] it wrong.”
Second guesses are all I’ve got, Another last chance and one more shot. And how I got here I don’t even know. The radio plays a brand new song. It says the same old thing they still get wrong Oh man, and so it goes.
And so it goes – a lifetime distilled into a handful of words.
I could go on about structure, how the number three is central to the architectonics – three six-line stanzas, three nine-line choruses, the narrator citing at one point his age is thirty-three, but you’d think I was overdoing it, and you’d be wrong. If it’s there, it’s there, whether the artist planned it or not. Making art is like dreaming, it comes from below, often surprising the artist him or herself.
By the way, George’s band Big Stoner Creek has a new album out. You can check it out HERE.
PS. Here’s an earlier rendition of stanza three and the concluding chorus:
You Do Hoodoo 