When They All Had Souls

L-R: Yours truly, dad Jack, brother Craig
November 22, 1989

“Looky here Little Caney, honey don’t you cry
You know we’re all going to die someday
And the hand of another you’ll be holding tight
When you walk out to the site where I lay”

On February 2, my father passed away at the age of 80. A simple cold turned into bronchitis, which turned into deadly pneumonia. It was the kind of cold he probably fought off 40-50 times in his life, but he’d been dealing with Parkinson’s disease for several years, and this past December he suffered a pair of additional setbacks from which he never quite recovered. With his immune system compromised, I think his body just gave up.

On February 24, my daughter, Lucinda Jane, was born. So, my dad missed her birth by a mere 22 days, a fact which breaks my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I understand and embrace “the circle of life,” but death is always easier to process on paper than in reality. If you were wondering why The Adios Lounge was quiet of late, now you know why.

Don’t get lost in the tall tall grass

Into this maelstrom of emotion, “Little Caney” has been an anodyne. I discussed this song almost exactly two years ago in SX Sam’s Town Point 2011, but also as recently as January 31, in Where’s the Place at the Table for Folks Like Us? In fact, the day after I published that post, my buddy Fred and I had this exchange:

Fred: Did you intentionally pick the song “Little Caney” as the song continuing the Replacements > Slobberbone > Glossary cycle?

Me: Yes and yes. “Little Caney” is about being connected to something larger than yourself, binding you to the past, and pointing your way to the future. It’s a powerful, humbling feeling and it must be shared.

I wrote that at 6:56 pm on Friday, February 1, and roughly 12 hours later my dad passed. By coincidence, February 1 would’ve also been my mom’s 80th birthday, a fact that weighed on me all day. She died on January 1, 1993, so this past New Years Day was the 20th anniversary of her death. Suffice to say, mournful milestones have been in abundance this year. The obvious exception to this was the birth of my daughter.

Lucinda Jane (aka Little Caney)

Hold my hand and walk the ground softly

Which brings us back to “Little Caney.” Written by Glossary singer/guitarist, Joey Kneiser, the sense of place is peerless. It’s southern to the bone (cornbread, anyone?), evoking a rural homestead with a graveyard tucked away on the family property. At the same time, it transcends geography because the idea of being connected to your lineage is a universal part of the human experience. You could be from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, or Huntington Beach, California, and it’s fair to say this concept will — or should — hit close to home.

And home is the heart of “Little Caney.” Its themes of familial continuity and tradition are as good as any country song ever written and I’ll stand on Jimmie Rodgers‘ coffee table in my Chuck Taylors and say that. Being connected to your past isn’t just a responsibility, it’s an act of love, and it’s encapsulated by the beautiful image of holding hands. The song opens, “Hold my hand and walk the ground softly.” It’s two generations literally connected to one another, making a metaphorical connection with previous generations by visiting their graves. The final stanza looks to the future when the parent has died and Caney is walking the ground softly with his/her own child (“And the hand of another you’ll be holding tight/When you walk out to the site where I lay”). The assumption, of course, is that Caney 2.0 is not only participating in the same process as Caney 1.0, but internalizing its importance as well.

If it’s true that love is something you do, not a romantic ideal you feel, few songs have embodied this love like “Little Caney.” It’s a love that builds bridges between past, present, and future, and it’s this song that I dedicate to my dad and newborn daughter.

Glossary – Little Caney
The Better Angels Of Our Nature, 2007
Bandcamp

Hold my hand and walk the ground softly
We don’t wanna wake the dead
Just want a little corn in our bread and settle down
Come on Little Caney you know the sun is sinking now
And we got to make it on out to where your branches lay

Marked by stones and covered by wildflowers
Is family you’ve never known
Rotten old clothes lying in boxes of bones
I wish you could’ve been there when they all had souls
So much soul
Where did it go?

The Band ~ Music From Big Pink

Next of Kin

I’d like to address one more element of “Little Caney” that generally gets overlooked. While the lyrics are about familial continuity, the music also achieves that through one specific reference. The stuttering turnaround from the chorus back into the verse directly echoes a similar passage in The Band’s “Jawbone,” one of many great songs from their Brown Album. This connection is particularly relevant because The Band was the first rock group to publicly embrace their next of kin in the late ’60s (see above), so much so that including a picture of their extended family inside Music From Big Pink almost made them counter-revolutionaries. Think about that. Loving your family being a revolutionary concept. Talk about a generation lost in the tall tall grass.

Jawbone meets Little Caney

I wish you could’ve been there when they all had souls
So much soul
Where did it go?

In memory of Jack Davis. Love you, Dad.