The Blues Woman

Our BIAB journey over the last two years has taken us to musical places we never dreamed of visiting. Watching Janice transform from a hard core bluegrass singer to a soulful blues and country singer has been quite the experience. And one for which we are extremely grateful to PG Music for their products and our collaborators and many friends from this community who have encouraged her to explore new musical territory.

With these changes have come some interesting reactions from our old friends who are often surprised and/or perplexed at this change in direction. I’ve attempted with this lyric, inspired by her, to reflect the journey of a woman moving from folk to blues music. To try and achieve this the song starts in the present, flashes back and then finishes again in the present.

Maybe too ambitious for me, maybe too long, maybe a strange song structure but, what the heck, I just wanted to try and tell the story.

Bud

Janice: Vocal and vocal arrangement
Bud: RT arrangement, effects, mixing and mastering
Tom Adams: Lead Guitar, vocal processing, drum processing and infinite patience in guiding me through his Ozone mastering settings.

Huge thanks to floyd for offering great input on the arrangement and mix and to Lawrence for an arrangement suggestion (to the extent that I plan an updated version).

Bass: electric blues rock 1012
Drums: Blues Shuffle
Fingerpicked Guitar: 528
Fingerpicked Guitar: 1679
Resophonic Guitar: 585
Piano: 1591
Electric Rhythm Guitar: 421

It's certainly interesting.... but sure ain't following the rules of the road on this one. In so many ways.

Well Bud, I'm all for experimentation when music is concern, and I think I've done that every now and then with somewhat a modest result. My point, I thought it came out very good and almost was waiting for the change, and it did happened, so IMHO you guys did good.

Mike B.

Hey Janice, Bud, Tom & Floyd,

Rules? In our opinion, until someone is paying us, we make the rules ... what few there are for us. We love to experiment, mixing genres, reshaping existing genres and just saying "what the hell" and do something extemporaneous just cuz we want to.

We thought this was a great listen. Bravo for a project that ended up real nice. Different? Yep, to some degree. Wrong? Not to our ears. Creative? You betcha! Bold? Yep.

Tom's guitar screams sweet and Janice's voice melts in the mic. The arrangement was bold and sweet.

Uh, we kinda liked it!!!!!!!!

Alan & Di

Bud,
I do like the timbre of Janice's voice....
I thought that it was a bit of a weird instrument change at the words "later I found the blues", verse 3, but then the song took off,lovely build up, a bit like gently flooring the accelerator in a powerful sports car on a nice straight road,radio on loud.

Yeh BIAB is a wonderful program as it can easily take you into genres you never thought of before, it certainly changed my style of songwriting.

Rules.. MEH!! you only know what sounds good or not when you break them.
All kudos to you, Tom and floyd on this arrangement and I look forward to the revised version following Lawrence's idea.
DID I say that I like Janice's vocals?? LOL

excellent

Alyn

Amen to those vocals. Great story, nice guitars riffing too. and once the band was all in place you guys could have kept on going and i would kept on listening. Nice.

Another great piece from ya'll; thanks for sharing!

Heck, we never read the rules in the first place! We're just a couple of rubes out in the provinces with some powerful software



Thanks Mike! BIAB just invites experimentation. Nothing ventured - nothing gained. Really glad it worked for you.

I kinda figured a few folks would jump on the "rules" comment.... hear me out...

Don't misunderstand my comments. I'm not down on you for your infractions of the "rules"..... I kinda figured that the rules be damned on this one.....

I do think, however, that with a bit more though, contemplation, effort, and work, it would have been possible to make the rhyme structure a bit more complete. There's always a way to make that part of a song work better. With ingenuity, everything is possible.

That's all I'm trying to say here.

Hi Janice & Bud and all the rest of the collab,

you gave me a great listen. I like it very much how the song develops. And Janice's voice and Tommy's guitar on top!
Go on disregarding the "rules".

Guenter

Janice & Bud's "Garden Party". Great way to showcase Janice's versatility and a great example of collaboration. I enjoyed this and think it is very creative.

Regards,

Charlie

When I finished the lyrics I felt that six verses and a bridge with an ABAB rhyme structure all the way through (28 rhymes - way way more than I've ever done before) might be interesting to some folks.

The write actually took a lot of "contemplation, effort and work." Maybe it lacked "ingenuity" which is ultimately determined by the ears of the listener...but both the effort and contemplation were assuredly there. Admittedly a thrown together write and production can be pleasing and an agonizingly long production can sound awful. What really matters is the final product which will never be pleasing to everybody.

Cheers
Bud

The rhyme structure isn't consistent with how you start in the first verse. What you set in the first verse is "usually" the pattern for the balance of the song. The rhymes should fall in the same places in the following verses.

6 verses and a bridge. The pattern is AAAABAA

V1: Cheers and Years at the end of 2&4

V2: Guys & eyes again at the end of 2&4

V3: no rhyme at all ........ something should rhyme with quickly

V4: no rhyme at all...........rhyme should have been with pocket

Bridge: No rhymes here either

V5: Sound and town BUT at the end of 1&3

V6: wrong & Along..... like v5 at the end of 1&3... you might be able to say fun & woman also rhyme as imperfect rhymes at the end of 2&4

I counted a few rhymes. Not 28.... and I looked to see where the others might be hiding. Sorry, I couldn't find them.

Guys, don't take me wrong, I'm not putting you down for writing a song with this sort of "open" structure, and it's not something to die over..... My comments were meant to say that with a little bit of effort the rhymes can be placed in the same place and the words chosen can be made to rhyme. Plenty of times I have written something that didn't work or rhyme and while I liked a specific line I had written, I really had to dig in and go deep to either rewrite that line so that it did rhyme, hence keeping the rhymes consistent or.....I had to scrap it and have another go at it.

If you are happy with the lyrics, fine.... I have no problems with that. I do not recall in former things you wrote having this sort of disparity appear between the verses where the patterns are so different. Perhaps I missed those..... perhaps not. My purpose in mentioning this is to simply point out things I see...things that are not consistent with (dare I say it again?) the rules of writing songs. Of course, you're free to break the rules as you see fit and feel.

Peace

Hey Herb, if you can accept the concept of "near rhymes" I think you will find that lines one/three and two/four either rhyme or near rhyme for every verse and the bridge. I did that intentionally.

BTW other terms I see used for near rhymes are approximate rhyme, inexact rhyme, imperfect rhyme (as you alluded to), slant rhyme, soft rhyme, etc., and lazy rhyme English poets grew fond of the convention and it seems to go in and out of popularity.

For example, look again at V4 which you said had no rhymes and consider the following:

Drummer/Nighter and Pocket/Ticket

My structure for this tune was to intentionally not rhyme lines 1/2 and 3/4 but rather to rhyme lines 1/3 and 2/4

"I found a good bass man and a solid drummer
Brought in a hot guitar and we fell right in the pocket
I called the old club and got us in with a one nighter
Word was that our opening night was a hot ticket"

I feel you are viewing this from the 1/2 and 2/4 perspective. Heck, if I'm gonna break rules I might as well break whatever rules cover which lines have to be rhymed while I'm at it

Hi Janice and Bud,

Great idea to do it this way, telling a story.
We like it very much especially the part where the bass, drums and guitar come in.

Regards,
R & AM

Hi, Bud & Janice, Tom & Floyd !!!:))


Wonderful collab to achieve a masterpiece !
...and Janice´s vocal combined with Tom´s
lead guitar ........Wowowowowowowowowowo !!!:))

This is a masterpiece..............


Cheers
Dani

Thanks y'all! It was a rare attempt at a "story song" and I'm happy that you enjoyed it.

Bud




Thanks Alyn, I was trying to emphasize the word blues with the intro of the reso guitar lick -- may have gotten it too hot. I'll check it. Appreciate it.





Thanks! We would have liked to extended the guitar jam with the band...but since I'd gone way past the "three minute" rule I hauled it it :-)

Bud

Hi guys. Very cool and interesting work!! It certainly was an ambitious project and I was very tickled by the sheer creativity. As always, I'm a sucker for Tom's sweet guitar sound! Maybe the song is less universal than some, but for people who have followed this musical evolution with great interest (and I certainly am one), it was a wonderful treat. As always, Great work!! Take care. Greg

Wow! the mix is awesome!

Janice's voice stands out and yet all of the instruments are present and accounted for.

It sounds really good. The transition to the blues part sounds very smooth now. It sounds like you did a lot of work to get it all to hold together and it does

Well done!

Thanks!



Thanks Guenter!

Bud (aka resident rule breaker)