"The Price Was Too Much to Pay"

[davidhanners]

This is a re-working of a song I wrote awhile back that I never ever perform. Just never figured out a melody I liked. (And lord knows I'm so melodic....) But I was down in Illinois last week, for my father's funeral, and pulled out the guitar and started noodling around on the tune and came up with something I can live with, and re-wrote a couple of lines as well. The song is an imaginary extrapolation of a bit of ancient family history (the less said the better) but I thought it'd make a good bluegrass number. It might still need a chorus, so the song may be unfinished. But, without further ado, I present to you:

THE PRICE WAS TOO MUCH TO PAY

I met her at the Cumberland County Fair
Where the ponies trot and pace
I had to meet that beautiful girl
No matter the price I must pay

She led me on with promises bold
Of the glade where we would soon lay
I said, "My love, I'd do anything for you
Just name the price I must pay"

She said, "There's a man who weighs on my mind
For my love he did betray
We'll not be free 'til he is gone
But his price is too much to pay"

So I called him out near Crooked Creek
On a lane well out of the way
I drew my knife and I took his life
For her love; a small price to pay

I told my love her trouble's now were o'er
He no longer stood in our way
She laughed and said, "His riches now are mine
And your life is the price I will pay"

She turned me in to Sheriff C.S. Young
In his jail I will live out my days
Boys, when the devil offers you a deal
Make sure it's a price you can pay
Yeah, boys, when the devil offers you a deal
Make sure it's a price you can pay

[Cornflake]

I like it, David. I'm a sucker for any song with a story.

Nitpick: "Where the ponies trot and pace"-- one of my idiosyncracies is that I don't like near rhymes. Whenever I hear one, I think the writer didn't work hard enough on the song.

Nitpick aside, it's a good one.

[Marshall]

David always tells a good story. This one seems more predictable than mosta them. I guess I want more mystery, or more passion.

Promises bold seems like an unusual concept. Or it doesn't sound alluring enough to make someone want to commit murder.

Where the ponies trot and pace doesn't convey the heat of passion I normally get from a Hanners tune. Somehow, I want something more like prancing hooves or flared nostrals or steam rising off their glistening hides.

Justa thought.

[davidhanners]

Thanks for the comments, gents. Some of the wording in the song -- for example, the phrase "promises bold" -- are meant to be archaic. The song takes place in the early 1900s. (1913, to be exact....)

"Trot and pace" are exact terms because they are types of horse races. (My grandfather was a jockey, and in fact, used to work for Frank James, as in "Jesse & Frank James." In his later years, after he went straight, Frank James worked as a race starter, and one of the fairs he worked was the Cumberland County Fair in Greenup, Ill., the area where this song takes place. Crooked Creek is (or was) a small community east of there where my family came from. the fair, by the way, is Illinois' second-oldest county fair.

[Marshall]

cool

[davidhanners]

Actually, upon reflection, I think Cornflake's comments and Marshall's comments have quite a bit of merit, and my reply to them was not entirely useful. I think I could fix the issues they raise if I put the song in some sort of time perspective, i.e., figure out some way to indicate what year or era it was. I was using archaic langauge and unless everything else about the song screams "old-timey!" -- which, in this case, it doesn't -- then there has to be some mechanism in the song explaining why you're using archaic idioms.

Or something like that.