JPF Home Page Forums Lyric and MP3 Feedback MP3 Feedback Forum Blind Joe's Curve

Great song, John, and the lyrical style harkens back to songs of old that rely on catchy meter and colorful storytelling and reminds me of Christy Moore (still going strong) and (of course) Canada's Stan Rogers who, like Chicago's Steve Goodman, made quite an impact on the folk world despite his short life.

Fairly original in how the narrator is in on some naughty stuff and quite proudly without much justification and/or rationalizing, just the line "A county slow with maintenance" --like a song from a pirate's POV, something I could imagine Randy Newman writing (but in a completely different musical style) cuz you force me to hear the singer as an antihero/scoundrel. When it's announced his (presumed) friend Bob dug the holes himself, the deal is sealed, and I am confronted with a singer taking part in a pirate-ish plunder scheme that has probably caused if not deaths at least some injuries, and I feel like I am inside the mind of one of the perpetrators, and come to understand how some crimes can be committed in this world with the thinnest of justifications (if any) and that it's a whole group of drinking guys that brings "threshold theory" into the mix-in-my-mind, and so, as a result, I have a wonderfully "complicated" reaction to this song! Especially when I take into account the fun, slighly/slightly humorous tone of the lyric.

My only wish is you keep playing it every day for another month or so and think you can have a more definitive performance as I feel you getting a little lost in the later verses and aren't "owning" the material like you really need to in order to pull off such a massive story song really well, and the guitar playing is great but the guitar itself seems slighly out-of-tune and could benefit from being tuned up a little better.