Years ago, I found an old book at my parents’ house called “Rough Rhymes of a Padre” which was a collection of poems written by G.A. Studdert Kennedy, a British military chaplain during World War I. Originally written in 1918, it was handed down through my mom’s side of the family. I ended up packing it up with me and taking it home. (Not sure why at the time. Maybe because the US had just invaded Iraq. Maybe because the lyrical form of the poetry was simple and appealing. Maybe a combination of the two. Don’t know.)
Kennedy was widely known as “Woodbine Willie” for his penchant of giving Woodbine cigarettes to British soldiers along the Western Front. His poetry largely focuses on those soldiers and the daily horrors they faced on the front lines of WWI.
For me, aside from the subject matter in Kennedy’s work, this project is a fairly simple one conceptually. Generally speaking, the way I’ve always written songs is music first, lyrics second. The “Woodbine Willie Project” is an attempt to do the opposite: lyrics first, music second, which, for me, feels almost as awkward as putting on shoes before socks. Hence, I would probably refer to this project mostly as an exercise, since I’m working some very underdeveloped muscles. Writing with my left hand instead of my right, and so forth.
Kennedy’s poetry works well for this exercise because it does have a naturally lyrical feel and is conducive to melody and structure. I picked Willie’s poem “The Secret” for my first piece for no particular reason. Aside from liking the poem and liking the vocal melody that came to mind. I kept it to 3 chords, which is very punk rock for the World War I era, but apparently Woodbine was somewhat punk rock as a pastor. He once told a congregation that “he would like to take a great sledgehammer and smash every stained glass window in the church, and then go out and celebrate the Eucharist in a field with a tea-cup and plate.”
As always, let me know what you think.
download file here:
The FMTana-“The Secret”
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