I had very elaborate guitar parts, harmonics, wired riffs, mixed in with gentle cords, hard rough chords, that I probably couldn't play anymore. I worked on the arrangement, spent a ton of time on it, because I'd heard Ellen McIlwaine play it and it made me see the song in a new way. I loved playing it back then, and was often complimented on my arrangement. Before I playing I'd announce that I was going to play a song that whenever I played it, people would say to me, 'you know I always hated that song.' People would ask me to play it, both in clubs and in private even, eventually, even my wife would ask me to play it, although I never felt that she was crazy for me to play guitar and sing.
I gave up playing about five or ten years ago.
I sang Ode to Billy Joe cross gender, not changing the words to reflect I was a male, a practice I learned from listening to Dave Van Ronk live and on record. I added a few phrases to the lyrics and changed some to sing in my rough male voice, "...mamma looked at me and said Jimmy Joe Johnson I've been cooking here for half the night... and look at your plate girl, you have not touched a single bite..."
I did the same, left the gender intact, with my rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Woman of Heart and Mind," that I played in her tuning, although in that case I inserted a few words, including my name, to make it sound like I was quoting a former girlfriend talking about me, which is how I thought of it when singing it. "I am a woman of heart and mind with time on her hands and no child to raise, and you come to me, you're like a little boy, and I give you my scorn and my praise..."
Digging deeper into how the words applied to my life...
"...is it all books and words or do you really feel it, do your really care, do you really laugh, do you really smile when you smile..."
"You criticize and you flatter. You imitate the best and the rest you memorize, but you know the times you impress me most are the times when you don't even try, when you don't even try..."
The girlfriend of whom I thought when I played in clubs long after we'd split, had introduced me to the song, which probably reflects what an asshole I was in my relationship with her, that she felt the need to play it for me and sing along with the record. When she dumped me, it helped to understand how to treat my future wife when she was still a girlfriend, the key point of which was "Don't be an asshole."
The lyrics to "Woman of Heart and Mind" were a pretty good, but pretty rough, put down. I deserved it with the earlier girlfriend. I'm glad she dumped me, though, because that freed me to meet and fall in love with my wife.
It was all a very long time ago in my misbegotten youth, where I sang through my overwhelming sadness and often deep depression. Then my wife came along, and I didn't have to sing anymore, because well, everything was beautiful thereafter.
I got better, but to return to Billy Joe, well, he died. He should have collected himself and lived on. I don't know what they were throwing off the bridge when they were together, but he threw away his life. I'm against suicide. No matter how bad things get, you'll still die anyway and get out of it whatever it is. There's no reason to rush things along, because things can, and sometimes do, get better.
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