I dreamed this song. When I woke up, I wrote it down. That’s when I became a songwriter. Barbara Asked was on my first album, produced in 1990. Jim Jones recorded it in Dallas.
Barbara Asked
Tag Archives: Folksong
O, Lion
In the year 1900, Pablo Picasso moved to Paris. He was around twenty and already the wonderboy of Barcelona.
Picasso quickly gathered a group of friends, an international circle of artists and writers whose daring and talent changed Western Art forever. Guillaume Apollinaire, poet and sometime pornographer, coined the term “Cubism” and died, regretful for dying young, of the Spanish Flu on Armistice Day, 1918. Max Jacob, who liked to fly high on Ether, pioneered absurdist poetry. Artists like Soutine, Matisse, Braque, and Modigliani were all part of the scene. Expatriot American writer Gertrude Stein facilitated the success of modern art with her salons.
“O, Lion” is a line from one of Guillaume Apollinaire’s poems: Oh, lion, unhappy image of sadly fallen kings … These artists saw the fall of the old empires and were part of the new, modern spirit of rebellion. They were serious about art and reckless with it, producing for their time and place and for eternity. They believed in the importance of their moment and in each other. In order to sing my tribute to them, I had to make myself into an old barber, finding an old razor blade with Picasso’s blood on it. That old barber was young in 1902. He kept that old blade for the rest of his life.
The Snow On the Pine
The Snow On the Pine, (c) Jennifer M. Peal
I’ll be releasing my new album, Receiver, this spring. This track is a stark folk ballad. The Snow on the Pine is a story told in intimacy after a few glasses of wine. Maybe she will come to regret her loose tongue …
I came to Chama with the snow on the pine Along with my husband who worked in a mine He told my parents when he asked for me That a man could make fortunes in the silver country My mother said,daughter, watch out what you do You can’t trust a husband who’s younger than you But we mde plans for leaving, my cattle I sold And we headed for Chama up the high mountain road Good-bye, Tucumcari, my dear family I’m ready to marry, I’m past thirty-three But love’s a rare treasure and love makes you blind When it’s fresh and unspoiled, like the snow on the pine He wasn’t a miner, there wasn’t a claim He made all his living by the luck of the game The surname he gave me wasn’t event his own And he played with my money until it was gone My new baby son asleep in his bed My husband burst in with a gun to his head Both men demanded I settle a debt But the one with the gun said he’d have me instead Marry an old man, your love he will crave Marry a young man, he’ll make you his slave Marry a gambler and one day you will find Their heart hgas turned cold like the snow on the pine I hid all I earned from the work that I found washing the clothes of the miners in town Winters are lasting but summers are brief as the life of a gambler in the silver country I paid off his liquor, I paid off his debt I paid off his killer without a regret Alone with my conscience, but I have been told That Chama has widows like Denver has gold And now my dear sisters I’m not what I was You know me before I gambled on love Men speak of treasure to be found in a mine while love melts away with the snow on the pine
