Through a rather prolonged series of unfortunate circumstances, I found myself "on the road" so to speak in a 35 year old motorhome, with my wolfish companion and a lot of guitars. While I consider this a temporary solution, and a way to embark on a long anticipated road trip, I found myself immediately aware of a very large population of people living permanently this way, and even many more living "off the grid" in evan more meager circumstances. Boondocking is a lifestyle involving parking overnight without being hassled by the police - it is now illegal in California to sleep in your car. They used to encourage you to do this if you felt too tired to drive or were a bit intoxicated. In northern California homeless camps are being raided by the police. I thought they had budget problems but apparently they have enough money to remove people from tent camps in the woods. Many of these people are veterans. Some are older who have just outlived their families. Some are families whose wage earner was laid off and found their primary asset, their home, worth half what they paid for it; in which case joblessness equates to homelessness. I have been working on a bluesy finger picking version of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" for some time and it occurred to me that this was not such a dated song. In the Great Depression many of the distressed were disabled veterans who had been deprived of promised benefits after World War I. Tent cities were common, and of course much of our great Blues heritage comes from this era. This is a song I see as one that could not have existed without the Blues influence, even though it is not strictly a Blues song. It was originally written as part of a Broadway Musical, but became a huge hit in it's day. The lyricist was a very notable artist named Yip Harburg, who among a library of important works wrote the lyrics for all the songs in the film "The Wizard of Oz." He had been an accountant before the depression and went bust. He then decided that as long as he was going to be broke, he might as well write songs. I have made this rather rough around the edges video in the back of this RV, a bit close quarters, and I have had to keep the volume low as I am in an RV Park at the moment. I'm not used to singing so quietly so I'm no thrilled about the vocal, but I could not resist playing this on my 1938 Kalamazoo, which is the year, I believe, the song was written. I include here a "prologue" which was part of the original song, but usually is not done when the song is covered.
Since this is a Kalamazoo, I also thought it would be fun to take a shot at some Robert Johnson, so I also am uploading a version of "Love in Vain." Finally, I have a version of "Everybody's Got to Change" - which is inspired by Corey's version but not per se Corey's version. The Kalamazoo has it's occassional buzzes and such, as it is now almost 80 years old and an ongoing project, but I love the sound although I don't think this video is eq'd very well. I've lowered the resolution here as I don't have a great connection and it would otherwise take too long to uppload.
