As far as theatre vs. pop lyrics and theatre vs. pop music, there’s SO MUCH I’d love to say about “theatre” vs. “pop” music, but much of it bears directly on next week’s song, “It Happens In A Moment.” So I’ll have a lot more to say next Wednesday…

As far as “Rocking Chairs” goes, it is, musically, a typical pop song format. It’s just a little short, and a little odd harmonically…but there’s:

• a first verse - “Don’t you wish we could skip the in-between stuff…”
• followed by a really short chorus: “sitting in our rocking chairs…”
• followed by another verse: “Wouldn’t it be nice to see the highlights…”
• followed by another chorus, twice as long
• followed by a bridge sung by Hope. The music does the typical pop music bridge trick of going from the major key of G (where we started in the verses) to E minor, the relative minor of G, for the bridge.
• Then Charles comes back in singing after a little more dialogue and we have…I don’t know…a different bridge. Let’s call it a tunnel. So this isn’t typical pop writing. BUT it leads directly back into…
• a final chorus, and we’re done.

More next week…unless somebody has any more burning questions about this tune, or anything else for that matter.

I would think that there would be more concern over how to “get into” and “out of” the song, obviously. Hard to do a “fade out” for a song in a theatre situation. Any thing else of this nature?

Yeah, but you’re the only member of GL whose child can literally be teased with “Your momma wears army boots”!!

Great song! Love to all.

We’re not actually appearing in Long Story Short in either Pittsburgh or Palo Alto. It’s a two-person musical with a four-piece band, and we are not going to be on stage. The show is cast, and we have some really terrific people playing Charles and Hope–these demos are just us, at home, singing the songs. The actors sound even better.

That’s how we can magically be on tour in December while Long Story Short is playing 8 shows a week in Palo Alto…

Sorry for the confusion!

In three weeks I am moving to Tennessee to be near my grandkids, and I do own a rocking chair. However, I can still remember the magic of falling in love… or more recently, the fantasy of falling in love… and of sitting at a table on an imagined ‘date’, not really listening to this beautiful woman across from me, but fast forwarding in my mind to future possibilities.

This new musical is going to be Fantastic! I can hardly wait for the the next release. WOW!

–Ed

P.S. I posted these comments earlier on the Discussion Page, but this does seem like the more appropriate place. Thanks!

Boring logistical question: If you guys are going to be doing “Long Story Short” in Palo Alto on 12/14, how are you also going to be doing “Striking 12″ in Carmel on the same date, same times? (Just bought my S12 Carmel tix yesterday, and am currently scratching my head.)

Steve in Davis, CA

Good stuff, thanks for sharing!!!

John–we’re working on a NYC gig real soon now–keep checking.

Michael in Germany–glad you like! It’s actually not live…but it’s one take with a couple of overdubs.

Rob–I’d love it if you could comment on the song page directly, but that’s one in a long list of possible features in the next iteration of Dan Coulter’s excellent discography plugin (www.blogsforbands.com). We’ll mention it to him.

Rocking Chairs does, in fact, have a refrain, but it’s really, really short: “sitting in our rocking chairs, watching grandkids playing on the lawn” is the one thing that appears three times. It’s like a very short chorus.

The trick is always to write a chorus in such a way as to sneak in repeatable material so that it sounds like a continuation of the conversation, rather than a repeat of the chorus just to drill it into the listener’s head. It’s a Nashville kinda thing, and a long-standing old-school musical theater thing.