Bill Monroe used to talk on stage about "true life" songs and what they meant to him. This is a tune that Janice and I wrote about our effort to find the old swimming hole from my childhood and it tells, well, a true life story. As with many of our BIAB efforts it started with a much more full band and got whittled down to this sparse version of vocal, bass, rhythm guitar, rhythm mandolin and Dobro.

All realtracks, USB Blue mic for the vocal and mixing/effects via Garageband. As with all our songs several of the tracks are pieced together from many generations of the same realtrack. It looks like quite a patchwork on the Garageband screen.

FWIW, I'm not happy with the bass line. I didn't want to use an electric and the song is too slow to use a bluegrass bass realtrack. I ended up using a pop acoustic bass realtrack but it is too busy for the simplicity of the rhythm. All this means is that I'll have to dust off my upright and play it myself.

Daddy's Swimming Hole

BTW, thank all of you who posted comments relating to our last song "Columbus Stockade Blues." I didn't want to keep bouncing it to the top of the forum by responding on the thread but we do sincerely appreciate y'all taking the time to comment.

Beautiful vocal effort, very well mixed. Nice flow to the lyrics. Thanks for sharing!


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As usual, very nice song and stellar vocals! Thanks for sharing it!

Steve

I don't think the bass is too busy, at all. It fits nicely in the song, especially with the tempo you used. The vocal is excellent. This song should be on the radio.

I loved the line about "the kids have pools at home".

Perfect arrangement for the simplicity of the message. I had no problem with the bass, rest of instrumentation was spot on. Very very nice, and great sentimental message..I'm sure Daddy's smiling!

Bud - another good one. Janice's vocals are always sweet. Would have like to hear a very subtle fiddle part somewhere... Great job.

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Bud - another good one. Janice's vocals are always sweet. Would have like to hear a very subtle fiddle part somewhere... Great job.

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Thanks everybody. I worked up a version with the fiddle but it seemed to constantly conflict with the Dobro as they both produce sustained notes. Probably could have made it work if I'd taken more time. We originally recorded this tune years ago with the great Randy Howard who was grammy nominated, played on everybody's record it seemed in country/bluegrass and was 12 time national fiddle champ. We had the privilege of releasing a CD that featured him. He passed away in 1999 which was one of the reasons we took such a break in writing and recording - when you've played with the likes of him it's hard to accept anything less -- plus his passing just took the steam out of our interest in recording, etc. Anyhow, he played a great fiddle part on our original version of swimming hole. The only reason we created this BIAB version is that Janice is now a much richer singer and we wanted to give it another shot.