You can listen to my song it by clicking the following title :) And there's another link in the song title just before the lyrics. I hope you like the song and it brings you back to great memories.
I guess my favourite line from the song is:
Memories flood my mind as I smell her shirt, Fields of grass and Nova Scotia dirt.
What I love in particular about the sense of smell is its ability to look forwards and backwards. Every morning when I take the lid off my huge can of coffee, I stick my whole face down in it and take a deep breath. And believe me when I tell you that I'm excited about what's to come as I start to make my coffee. It's a part of my daily routine that I really enjoy. I keep my can of coffee in the fridge so it's really cold, and it smells different than when it's at room temperature. It's a very specific smell that I've really come to enjoy, and I look forward to every day.
Smells from the past, wow. I was playing a gig last year in the town I spent the most years in as a kid growing up. It’s a no-name place called Lagoon City on Lake Simcoe in southern Ontario, Canada. We were one of the first families to build a year round home there and now it’s a fairly booming weekend resort community. Or maybe a super hamlet or something.
I have such a history with Lagoon City because it means so much to me, and a rich history with the Harbor Inn in particular. I think they call it the Knight’s Inn now. While it was being built in the 70s I was their nighttime security guard when I was only 13 years old. I was a bruiser by then and I looked 18.
I remember one night the fire alarm went off. It just happened I guess. There was no fire and I think maybe just a hot electrical room with a closed door set it off. I ended up calling the police because I was only 13 and I really didn’t know what to do.
When the place was finally built I became their first dishwasher at 15. I was also the first person to quit when the manager told me to get into a huge garbage bin and shovel out six inches of maggots. It wasn’t a request. He flat out said it was the garbage bin or the job. Well, that was my first run-in with management, and the entire staff applauded as I told him to go screw himself, took my bike and wheeled myself off the property.
I also received my first dose of instant gratification from sticking it to the man. As I left, there was that manager, that rotten prick, maggots higher than his designer leather shoes and halfway up his socks, in that garbage bin with a shovel because he knew damn well he couldn’t afford to lose another employee that day.
In a severe twist of irony, I had such a startling growth spurt from 15 to 17 that, without recognizing me, he hired me happily to play my first gig for $150 for the night in 1982. That’s one dumb suit. In 1982 $150 was a lot of ice cream kids. Liona Boyd had played there just the week before but I was too young and green and stupid to advertise that she was opening for me even though I was playing a week after her.
When I walked into the Harbor Inn more than 20 years later to play another gig, wow the smell of the place just hit me, and it was so wonderful to know I'd come home again.
Smell. It's almost hypnotizing sometimes. The smell of some dessert or food wafting through the air mixing with city smells like heat coming off the sidewalks and busses ferrying the masses.
I've always loved the song Traveling Soldier by The Dixie Chicks. It’s a very touching song about a young man going off to war and asking a pretty young waitress if he could write to her because he had no one else.
But the reality is, we now live in a world where women are often the ones who go off to war and their men are home with the children. So I imagined what that would look like if my highschool sweetheart was overseas serving in the military. What would it look and feel like for me to be raising our little girl while she’s away. Sitting on our bed at night, smelling her shirt that she used to wear while we held hands laying in a field of deep grass together on a warm Canadian summer’s day. I wondered if it would smell like all the places we'd hung out when we drove around in my old truck? Carefree times on those hazy summer afternoons, with the crickets chirping, bees buzzing, wind lightly ruffling the leaves of giant maples, and weeping willows swaying majestically. Those are some of the best days, when dandelion fluff floats lazily on the air and you feel alternating hot and cool breezes.
All my senses and my skin have never felt more alive than that. Except for that one time up near Thunder Bay on top of Lake Superior when my buddy convinced me to run out of a sauna, roll around in the snow and then jump in the lake. In all honesty I thought he was a psychopath until I did it. You know something, the snow doesn't even feel cold at that point, it actually feels hot.
I went to high school in Orillia. Two hours each way to and from Twin Lakes Secondary School, on a bus that was attracted to every back road pothole, taught me how to read in vehicles. There was no Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum or James Clavell novel that was safe from me.
Gordon Lightfoot is from there, well, at least I remember it that way. I could goawgle that (My buddy’s kid’s pronunciation. She had the most adorable speech impediment as a child that I almost regret them sending her for therapy) but why would I want to deprive you of searching it for yourself! Whatever that outcome, he is one of Canada's best musicians and song writers of all time and a National Treasure.
I remember playing music at the Holiday Inn in Orillia in my teens. What an experience that was. It was a ‘play to get paid’ deal where I strictly got a cut of the bar tab. At 17 years of age, I had to be the guy to turn off the laser disc viewing of Rocky or turn off an NHL game to play my set. And you wonder why I have no fear of anything on this earth! You’d better be tough if you’re turning off a hockey game in a bar in Canada. Hey don’t tell them I was underage ok.
I never really made a ton of money playing that gig but it was a blast and the cute bartender had a thing for me. To make ends meet I would bus food to rooms during the day to make some extra cash. As it turns out, Gordon Lightfoot opened the door one day, and as I handed him his food he passed me 5 bucks as an ‘out of sight’ woman’s voice yelled, ‘You’d better not be giving that kid a huge tip.’ Gordon winked and told me, ‘Take the money and run kid, I’ll deal with her.’ It was a great investment by Mr. Lightfoot, as I still play about three of his songs to this day when I gig.
This is a simple, unproduced version of my song, and is its first appearance in the public domain and has never gone to radio. Well, other than that I sang it live on a discord show once this week. It is raw and unfiltered, one take no corrections and is absolutely ‘as is.’ I sometimes prefer that to my fully produced work to be honest.
I hope you like my song, and thanks for reading I really appreciate it!
Today I wanted to share another original song with you called
Ever since I was a little boy
Winters laughing, summer joy
Days chased nights and nights chased days
Across the sea and back to me
Later years, dusty roads in that old truck
Windows down and holdin’ hands
We’d laugh and talk till that big moon would glow
Singing easy come and easy go
And we’d sing easy come, easy go
Now I know
Nothing in this life is easy
When it comes to lettin’ go
When love puts down roots
And you stumble and fall
Growin’ ain’t so easy after all
Sleepless nights, alone in my room
Cross legged on our bed,
Memories flood my mind
As I smell her shirt
Fields of grass and Nova Scotia dirt
And I sing
The sweetest thing that I do each day
Is watch our little girl play
Laughing at the sky each day I watch her grow
She’s hummin’ easy come and easy go
© Michael Arthur Tremblay 2013
