Pop song "hooks" are usually short rhythmic or melodic phrases, designed to grab our attention and pull us out of our personal streams of consciousness. The term is an apt one; pop artists use musical hooks to attract us, much like anglers use hooks and lures to attract fish. I'm a words person, so I enjoy puns and verbal hooks in songs as well as rhythmic and melodic ones.
And then there are what I call storyhook songs, ones that can't be appreciated until you hear the whole story--although because we live in an era of diminished attention spans such songs may be dying out, like salmon species that have lost their spawning grounds. (Perhaps someone should get the hook and pull me off stage before I run this fish analogy into the ground...).
Two of my favorite storyhook songs are set in the Old West, and I enjoy listening to both of them just as much as when I first heard them more than twenty years ago. Both are classic examples of short stories set to music, with haunting endings that O. Henry himself might have envied.
"Sonora's Death Row," written by the mysteriously monikered Kevin Blackie Farrell (does anyone know anything about him?), hooks me on a couple of different levels. The song has been recorded by various artists over the years, but the version that made me sit up and take notice is from Leo Kottke's 1978 album entitled Burnt Lips, re-released in 1994 on the British label BGO Records.
Kottke's quietly weepy slide guitar and flat, sorrowful voice are the only instrumentation, and they're all the song needs. The first verse sets the scene right away by describing the wonders of Saturday nights in Sonora, Mexico, including
...guitars and trumpets and sweet senoritas
who won't want to let you go
You'd never believe such a happy town
had a street called Sonora's Death Row
The song's narrator goes on to relate a night of revelry and a card game, until
...the whiskey and mescal and peso cigars
drove me outside for some air
Somebody whispered "Your life or your money"
I reached but my gun wasn't there
After regaining consciousness, he finds a rifle and reenters the saloon to take his swift, murderous revenge. As time comes to a standstill and everyone gapes at the grisly tableau, the hook is set:
And as I bowed my head, a tremble shot through me
My pistol was still at my side
I felt my pockets and there was my money
I fell to my knees and I cried
What? He had been robbed! How could this be? The last verse sums everything up:
A nightmare of mescal was all that it was
No one had robbed me at all
I wish I was dreaming the sound of the gallows
they're testing just outside the wall
And the mescal's still free in Amanda's Saloon
for the boys from the old Broken O
I'd pay a ransom to drink there today
and be free of Sonora's Death Row
Kottke's mournful monotone is perfectly suited to the song, which makes no attempt to moralize or change its point of view; the narrator's voice is consistent throughout. And the fact that he understands the situation so completely in what must be the final moments of his life adds to the eeriness of the tale.
The other storyhook song is by Michael Smith, a songwriter whose insight into the human psyche and ability to transport the listener to another time and place are both demonstrated in "Roving Cowboy (Ballad of Dan Moody)." The late Steve Goodman, no slouch of a songwriter himself, was a tireless champion of other songwriters, and recorded "Roving Cowboy" on his 1976 album entitled Words We Can Dance To (now re-released on the label Goodman established before his death, Red Pajamas Records). Goodman recorded a number of Smith's songs during his career, including "The Dutchman" and "Spoon River."
"Roving Cowboy" isn't as dark as "Sonora's Death Row," and gallops through its verses in an almost jaunty manner. However, the narrator's use of the past tense as the song opens is telling:
He used to be a roving cowboy
He used to be a rodeo cowhand
The song goes on to relate the subject's desire to rob a train, and the narrator's attempts to dissuade him and two other friends from doing so. Finally,
They done the deed and was successful
And returned that very night
Looking the same around the eyes
I love that last line; it's such a great detail, the kind of thing that only a gifted storyteller would think of and be inspired to relate.
The narrator then tells us that he recently found Jesus, and how he spoke to his friends of the "eternal consequences" of their actions. However,
They soon fell in with sweet companions
Who helped them spend their evil wage
Until the thought of precious Jesus
Drove me to a holy rage
And I knew they must be saved
The hook in this story is more subtle, but eerie nonetheless. The sheriff and his deputies come, "seeking shelter from the wild deep snow" and "information about those three rodeo chums," and the narrator tells us
I didn't know that they'd be sleeping
That they'd come out with guns ablaze
And that all three was to be murdered
This was never my intention
This I swear I did not know
When I told the posse where to go
Whoa. How's that for eternal consequences?
For me, the perfection of this song's arrangement is part of its appeal. The galloping rhythm is complemented by the banjo and impeccable pedal steel guitar of Winnie Winston, and the background vocals of Bill Swofford provide an ethereal, Greek chorus quality that help the song build to and reach its climax. Jim Post then adds his soaring Texas tenor voice to the mix, bringing the song full circle by repeating the first verse, the last lines of which fade away into the winter landscape:
Such a cold and a bitter time
Snow was drifting on the line...
It's interesting to contemplate the moral thicket Smith leads us to by having the narrator's religious beliefs cause the deaths of others. Although this song was written in the 1960s, its theme is a timeless one.