{"id":5019,"date":"2013-05-13T13:39:21","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T18:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/?p=5019"},"modified":"2019-08-20T12:38:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T17:38:42","slug":"song-of-the-day-the-western-isles-by-josh-rouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/13\/song-of-the-day-the-western-isles-by-josh-rouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Day: The Western Isles by Josh Rouse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How to Play &quot;The Western Isles&quot; by Josh Rouse\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HslwEPbziiQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Update 05\/22\/13 :<\/span> I just heard Josh do a live interview\/ 3 song session on a Radio station in London. He did play this song, so I listened closely to the lyrics during the refrain\/bridge part. Sounds like I got the &#8220;Black Greece Tea&#8221; part right. I guess there is such a thing as Black Greece tea. The second part I didn&#8217;t have right, but I could hear him clearly and it&#8217;s &#8220;Maybe we&#8217;ve been daydreaming.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I should warn you. Probably about 90% of these songs are going to be Josh Rouse. He&#8217;s been my favorite singer\/songwriter for the last going on 7 years now. So I&#8217;ve spent a lot of time trying to pick out his chords and enjoying singing his songs. I really should try to broaden out my repertoire though. REM, Smiths, Replacements, Police, really just anytime I hear a song I like, I should at least take a crack at it. Can&#8217;t hurt.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway today&#8217;s song: &#8220;The Western Isles&#8221; by Josh Rouse. It&#8217;s the 9th track off his most recent album &#8220;The Happiness Waltz.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What made me pick it, was not only did I love the song, but something reminded me that it was a Google Play Music pick of the day a few weeks ago. That&#8217;s all I need. Plus I couldn&#8217;t get it out of my head.<\/p>\n<p>First off what&#8217;s interesting about this song is that it is in the Key of A, but there&#8217;s never an A chord in the song. It starts out on a Dmaj7 then to an Emaj. The main riff kind of swings back in forth between those two chords, as well as the verse, with an F#m thrown in for an accent. Another interesting thing about this song: It has a bass driven riff. So, that&#8217;s one reason I sort of steered clear of it. I thought that within the context of me just playing with an acoustic, and maybe a harmonica, that I really couldn&#8217;t present that main riff motif. But I found that with an A harmonica, I can sort of imitate that bass riff, which itself is echoed, during the songs&#8217; interludes, by a lovely sounding organ in the original recording.<\/p>\n<p>Also, it&#8217;s one of those Josh songs where he sings something, I just can&#8217;t decipher, and apparently no one else can either, because when I did a lyric search, all the sites that have the lyrics for this song have a &#8220;?&#8221; by this same passage. The best I can decipher it, and you&#8217;ll know the part I&#8217;m talking about if you listen to the song, is &#8220;Cigarettes and black Greece tea.&#8221; Oh, speaking musically, this is on the refrain part of the song, which begins on an F#m, and then kind of stays on that chord with a half step down bass line F#-F-E-Eb- at which point when it arrives at the D it just goes into the D chord itself for the &#8220;Could we&#8230;&#8221; and the &#8220;feel at&#8221; is on top of the E chord, back to the D chord for &#8220;home&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the second time that it does that refrain it repeats the passage with words I totally can&#8217;t understand. I mean the &#8220;Cigarettes and black Greece tea&#8221; sound like they almost could be right, or have a chance of being right, but this second passage, I just have make something up, which I know is wrong, but still work to get me through the song: &#8220;Maybe we&#8217;ve been patron leave.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This leads me to a rant: Why is it so damn hard to get the lyrics and or liner notes to these albums nowadays?! It makes me crazy. Why doesn&#8217;t Josh and all the other acts publish these things on their websites or whatever? Damn, it&#8217;s frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;ll publishing the words as I&#8217;m doing them at this moment. Maybe these artists think that&#8217;s part of the fun of it, part of the &#8220;mystery&#8221; of being a Shamanesque type of figure. Maybe. Whatever.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3 dir=\"ltr\">The Western Isles by Josh Rouse from <em>The Happiness Waltz<\/em><\/h3>\n<p><b><b>Verse 1:<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">All day, I can see the life from the western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Faded in white like a western smile<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">We could live here, you know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Nobody&#8217;s saved, caught up in a life that is based on lies<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Struggle and strife from the nights of fire<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Just getting by, you know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Refrain:<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Cigarettes and black greece &nbsp;tea&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">could we feel at home?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><b>Verse 2:<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Far, far away,<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">I can hear the birds on western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Singing in the night like an ancient choir<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">&#8216;Oh how I love you so&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Don&#8217;t worry baby,<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">You&#8217;ll be alright with the western smile<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Maybe there&#8217;s a life on the western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">In a few years or so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Refrain #2:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Cigarettes and black green tea<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">maybe we&#8217;ve been daydreaming.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">And we&#8217;re almost home<\/span> <em>(This is sort of a &#8220;Middle Eight&#8221; part where, instead of going back into that D chord, he uses the F#m with the walk down bass riff)<\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Almost home&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>(And then back in into the Dmaj7-E back and forth for the ending lines to fade out and echo on.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Headin&#8217; for the western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">We heading for the western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">We heading for the western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">We heading for the western isles<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Oh where do we wanna go?<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Oh where do we wanna go?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Update 05\/22\/13 : I just heard Josh do a live interview\/ 3 song session on a Radio station in London. He did play this song, so I listened closely to the lyrics during the refrain\/bridge part. Sounds like I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/13\/song-of-the-day-the-western-isles-by-josh-rouse\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[309,78],"tags":[410,411],"class_list":["post-5019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-music","tag-live-set-list","tag-song-of-the-day"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}