Cigar Box Banjo (28 page)

In case there is any doubt on the matter, let me state categorically that I like it here. I enjoy the earth and its bounties. I like fishing, I like single malt, I especially like cooked pig in its many manifestations. At the esteemed steak house, Fleming’s, we learned once again that, in certain regards, Americans are better than Canadians. Americans know their way around huge slabs of meat, and they certainly know how to handle a great big genetically altered potato. At the Bluebird Cafe, we saw Don Schlitz, the writer of many fine songs. (Including “The Gambler,” which just now started playing on the Internet radio station I’m listening to.)

But as those fine days in Nashville ticked away, the thought of preparation seized me. A little phrase came to mind. More an exchange, really.

“Are you ready?”

“Am I ready?”

A call and response, field hands calling back and forth.

“Are you ready?”

With the answer coming, “Am I ready? I believe I am.”

Danny had instructed the hotel management to put a keyboard in his hotel room, and one morning I walked down the hall and told him my idea. The musical basis for the song, I said, would be the three chords that constitute the underpinning for my song “Mary Cargill.” That was the first song I’d ever played for Danny, after our little “Christmas Comes But Once a Year” jape. At the time, Dan-Dan said (without embarrassment or irony, the same way he says everything), “Paul, if I were ever to write a song with somebody else, it would be somebody who wrote a song like that.” So I played the three “Mary Cargill” chords in Dan’s hotel room and offered my one lyrical notion—it involved a freight train, as many of my lyric ideas do—and Danny took it away. I could see why he is so sought after as a collaborator. He seemed to have endless ideas and very little ego. “Here’s what I think, but it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just throwing this out there.” I am not paraphrasing the general tenor of his input, I am transcribing exactly what he said. And in such a manner was the first verse of our song written.

The night is coming, creeping oh so close,
I try to hold it off, but still I know—
It’s like trying to hold back an old freight train
Coming down on me . . . still I’m not afraid
I’ve got this feeling that I can’t explain
Like I’m falling through the evening rain,
Wash me clean before I make my stand
Are you ready? I believe I am.

I would add more here about the food we ate in Nashville, but it seems a little excessive. Here’s my death-defying promise. If I finish this book, and if I subsequently write a little novella, or novelette, or noveleenie, about the early days of gospel music (that’s my idea, what do you think, huh, huh?), then I will write a book about all the meals my brother and I ate together. Which, judging from the size of us, were newsworthy and considerable. For now, I will report only that we journeyed back to Toronto and that, two days after our return, both Danny and Joelie called me up to say they missed each other.

As soon as I got home, I went next door and asked Martin to help me with the second verse of the song. His style is different from Danny’s, since he tends to shape phrases and sentences fully before he suggests them. We worked away on it, and before long the second verse was complete.

The ocean is rising as the sun goes down
What isn’t water will surely drown
But I can’t hold the tide at bay
The moon will rise, it’s gonna light my way
No one can tell me where I’m gonna be
When I sail into the mystery
I know I’m falling, don’t know where I’m gonna land
Are you ready? Am I ready? I believe I am.

I had decided on a figure to separate the verses, a simple little march up the fretboard. It suited my musical sensibilities not only to play this figure but to push it suddenly and emphatically up a whole tone, the kind of abrupt key change that characterizes the sweet, soulful Toronto Sound. I played something for Danny and Marty one afternoon in late fall (“We got to finish this thing!”), and Dan started singing some words, being open and confessional.

So close to something, I feel it
All alone, I can’t help believing—
Here I go into the Great Unknown

We elected to reprise some of the earlier lyrics, and that was that. The three of us had written a song, and another door thus opens. Dan assures us our song will be a hit. Moreover, it will be a
country
hit. Maybe he’s right—who can say? In the meantime, there are plans afoot, more airs and whistles to be fashioned. It ain’t over till it’s over, and that’s good enough, or nearly, for me.

. . .

MARTIN WORTHY
writes:

The plan had always been to record “Are You Ready” in Nashville. Matt, Fred, and Dan were anxious to get production underway, but first they wanted to hear Paul sing the song himself, as a kind of emotional road map. The easiest thing to do was have him come next door to my little home studio, so that he could record it the way he felt it. I helped him up the stairs that afternoon in early December. Even with the portable O
₂
Paul’s breathing was laboured, and he was moving slowly. He sat catching his breath for about fifteen minutes while I busied myself adjusting the mic placement and setting levels.

Paul had developed a nagging, random cough that made it difficult to predict how long he could speak or sing without interruption. That, combined with what was by now a constant stream of visitors and phone calls, made us decide to record his guitar and his vocal separately. Laying down the guitar was easy for an old hand like Paul. Despite everything, he then managed an utterly compelling version of the song, straight through, on the second take. We sent the tracks to Nashville, and it wasn’t long before Fred and Matt sent back some rough mixes for us to hear. They had kept Paul’s simple, achingly honest vocal and surrounded it with the lovingly understated playing of some first-call “Nashville cats.” Paul and I sat in his kitchen and listened, gob-smacked.

On a Sunday afternoon in mid-January, Paul and I and our old friend Nick Jennings went to David Gray’s studio, where Paul’s brother Joel was set to record some bass tracks for Paul’s solo record. In his typical style, right as we were packing up, Paul had another idea. “I’ve got this little tune I’d like to try before we go,” he said. Dave scrambled to set up a stereo mic, and Paul encouraged all of us to join him as we recorded it off the floor. It was an old-school way of working, he pointed out, just like in the early days of radio.

Paul referred to himself as “Earl” in the new song; Earl, the leader of a strange band called Earl and the Pearls, was a character he sometimes adopted. Half spoken, half sung, the song charted the evolution of a sign posted on the side of an evangelical church on Richmond Street in Toronto. Paul had been looking at it all his life, and though the format of the sign had changed a few times over the years, the message was always the same: “The End Is Near. Call Jim.” Toward the end of the song, Paul paused for a moment, dialled a number on an imaginary telephone, then joyfully belted out, “Hello Jim! I liked it here! So thanks for telling me that the end is near.” Not only was he ready to go, he was letting us know, he had no regrets.

A group of us went out for dinner that night to celebrate Joel’s birthday. More friends came over after we got home. We drank wine, laughed and talked about music. Paul died peacefully seventy-eight hours later, on January 21, 2010. He was fifty-six years old.

1
There is also a
place
called Quarrington Hill, in County Durham, England, which I found out about later in life. My brother Tony went there, being of a sentimental and genealogical bent. He went into the local and rather ostentatiously used his credit card, with the name “Quarrington” embossed upon it. The publican raised neither bushy eyebrow.

2
The Carter Family (no relation to Wilf) recorded between 1927 and 1956. The members of the original group were A.P. and Sara Carter and A.P.’s sister-in-law Maybelle. Maybelle’s daughter June would go on to perform with, and marry, Johnny Cash.

3
I don’t.

4
This is one of those songs that, like “Ode to Billie Joe,” operates on a subtextual level. Oooh, I love subtext. The lyrics demand repeated listening—at least, they did for me, although admittedly I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer—and will reward the careful listener. And then the careful listener will blubber unabashedly.

5
I know I shouldn’t write “me and Joel,” but that’s what I’ve been saying all my life.

Hello Jim

I remember when I was a kid, my father would drive me downtown. / This was a long time ago, before the city was anything like the city it is today. / We’d roll down Bayview Avenue and turn on Richmond Street. / And there was this little church there, had a big sign outside. / The sign said, “The end is near. Call Jim. / The end is near. Call Jim.”

There was a telephone number. I remember the telephone number. / But I don’t think I should tell you what it is. / There seems to be a lot of red tape involved in saying someone’s phone number in public. / I will tell you that the number began “Walnut 2.” / That’s how we said telephone numbers back then: “Walnut 2.” “Lennox 3.” “Hickory 7.” / “The end is near. Call Jim. / The end is near. Call Jim.”

I grew up some, and started taking the streetcar downtown. / And sometimes I’d get off at Richmond and walk around a little bit. / And I’d see that church sitting there. / The telephone number was a little different now—“922,” it started. / But the message was the same. / “The end is near. Call Jim. / The end is near. Call Jim.”

So today, I still live in the city, and sometimes I’ll drive downtown. / And I’ll take the highway, the super-connector. / And sometimes when I drive past the Richmond Street exit / I’ll peek through the guard rails, and I can see that church. / It’s still down there, that little church. / And now the sign says, “www.the end is near.com / www.the end is near.com.”

And I need to tell you something else. / The end
is
near. The doctors finished analyzing all the tests they’d given me, / And they said, “Yeah . . . the end is near.” / They said: “If there are affairs you need to put in order, do so. / If you have unfinished business, you should conduct it. / Because . . . the end is near.”

I thought about that. / And there
was
one thing I needed to do. / Something I’d needed to do since I was a little boy. / And I picked up the phone . . .

“Hello, Jim, my name is Earl!
Lost a lot of fights, got some of the girls.

“Hello, Jim, I enjoyed it here!
Drank too much whisky, just the right amount of beer.

“Hello, Jim. It was a gas.
I like little trouts and big-assed bass!

“Hello, Jim, I liked it here!
Thanks for telling me that the end is near!

“Hello, Jim! Hello, Jim!”
Are You Ready?

The night is coming, creeping oh so close
I try to hold it off, but still I know
It’s like trying to hold back an old freight train
Coming down on me . . . still I’m not afraid
I’ve got this feeling that I can’t explain
Like I’m falling through the evening rain
Wash me clean before I make my stand.
Are you ready? Am I ready? I believe I am.

The ocean is rising as the sun goes down
What isn’t water will surely drown
But I can’t hold the tide at bay
The moon will rise, it’s gonna light my way
No one can tell me where I’m gonna be
When I sail into the mystery
I know I’m falling, don’t know where I’m gonna land
Are you ready? Am I ready? I believe I am.

So close to something, I feel it.
All alone, I can’t help believing—
Here I go into the Great Unknown

No one can tell me where I’m gonna be
When I sail into the mystery
I know I’m falling, don’t know where I’m gonna land
Are you ready? Am I ready? I believe I am.

SOURCES

Brinnin, John.
Dylan Thomas in America.
Toronto: Key Porter, 2002.

Brodie, Richard.
Virus of the Mind.
New York: Hay House, 2009.

Campbell, James.
The Picador Book of Blues and Jazz.
Surrey, UK: Picador, 1996.

Cohen, Ronald D., ed.
Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1934–1997.
New York: Routledge, 2003.

Dylan, Bob.
Chronicles: Volume One.
New York: Simon &Schuster, 2005.

Moore, Allan.
The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Palmer, Robert.
Deep Blues.
London: Penguin, 1982.

Shelton, Robert.
No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan.
Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003.

Solomon, Andrew.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.
New York: Scribner, 2002.

PAUL QUARRINGTON was an acclaimed non-fiction writer, novelist, screenwriter, filmmaker, songwriter, and musician. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction for his novel
Whale Music,
and his last novel,
The Ravine
, was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Quarrington received the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his novel
King Leary,
which was also the victor in Canada Reads 2008. He was frontman, vocalist, and rhythm guitarist for the band Porkbelly Futures.