rock'n'rill

Coal Stays In The Ground

Hope you’ve all seen & read my last blog post about great Austin songsmith Bill Carter.

I’ve been playing the Lifelong Rhapsody CD all week and have started playing a couple of those tunes myself. Here’s my home demo of “The Coal Stays In The Ground”, the beautiful album closer. (As always, I’m not slavishly copying the original version. This is just my approximation of and my take on the song.)

There’s a beautiful little bit about songwriting on Bill’s website written by his wife and frequent co-writer Ruth Ellsworth that I wanted to share with you. Here it is:

“People often ask “how do you write a song”? The answer is that every song is conceived  organically and uniquely. Some start with a groove, some with a lyric, some with just the desire to write a song. I truly think a lot of it is the way your mind is wired. As children we both made up little songs, parodies, or rhymes to entertain ourselves.  As adults, we try to make our songs different, meaningful, funny or whatever the “song” itself dictates. The song writing was never a means to an end, it was always the reward in itself. We have been honored that others have found a connection to our music. It is a thrill to have somebody you have always admired record one of your songs, but it is also a thrill to have one of your songs connect with an individual in the audience. Our songs are like our children, we do the best we can and send them out into the world to find their places. We hope they have made you laugh, touched your hearts, moved you to action and made you dance till the wee wee hours.”   Ruth Ellsworth Carter

17 November 2011 ·

• Tags
• folk
• country
• Austin
• Texas
• Bill Carter
• songwriting
• demo