jimmie tarlton wrote the song down in the valley.
jimmie tarlton wrote the song down in the valley.
who wrote the song down in the valley?
jimmie tarlton
Na
Na
"for the sake of the song" includes all van zandt originals and several of his best known works, including "waiting around to die", a song the singer claims in the film "heartworn highways" to be the first tune he ever wrote. in the van zandt documentary "be here to love me", the singer's first wife fran reveals that van zandt wrote the song in a small walk-in closet, which he had turned into a makeshift studio, in their first apartment after the couple got married: "he would sit in there for hours. you'd have to remind him it was dinnertime to get him to come out. that was when he wrote 'waiting around to die', which was the first song...i was twenty years old - a newly wed - and 'waitin' around to die wasn't exactly...i was expecting a "love ballad" or something." the song chronicles the life of a fictional drifter as he passes sadly through the experiences of an abusive father, the abandonment of his mother, drug and alcohol abuse, fast women, and even prison. van zandt later explained to paul zollo in "songwriters on songwriting", "i have to watch that when i do shows. i have to stay away from that side, because nobody wants to hear blues on blues on blues." the title track has also garnered much praise, with john kruth writing that the song "reveals the complexity of an unrequited relationship burdened by the pitfall of desire. the lyric contains a sophisticated internal rhyme scheme that sings like a country song while reading like poetry on the page." "that's where my poetic background comes in," van zandt is quoted in "songwriters on songwriting". "it seems a lot of people in nashville write by phrase, or by the line. as opposed to writing by the word. a lot of my best songs are where every single word is where it's supposed to be...'for the sake of the song' was written by the word. i once sat down and wrote out the rhyme scheme for that song, and it was amazing. pretty complex. but it didn’t seem that complex when i was writing it." on "tecumseh valley", a tragic song about a miner's daughter named caroline, van zandt agreed to change the line "whoring out on the streets" to "walking in the streets" for the album at clement's suggestion, who feared the lyric might be too offensive.
for the sake of the song