Savannah Rising - Gloryland: Tales from the Old South

Jay Douglas belts out the song "Savannah Rising." Bill King on piano.

music available @
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/glor...

"Savannah Rising"
music & lyrics by Bill King

The rains have gone
And summer wind blows strong
As the tall grass
Snakes around the trees
Light comes seepin'
Through withering vines
bearing down on me
There's flesh and blood spilled on this land..
So much history

A Savannah's Rising
beneath our feet
Between the fields of green

A fire rages
Cross the forest floor
The horses kicked
the barn door in
I lay her down in a stack of hay
and made love till the following day
A son would be born
The last of May
The earth shall register his name

A Savannah's Rising
under our feet
the fields are ours to claim -- and the fields are ours to claim..

The gates of heaven
Are a distance away
The good Lord stands by me
The preacher man keeps saying those words
That will keep me pure and clean
The holy-spirit oversees this land
As the guardian angel prays

A Savannah's Rising
Beneath our feet
And the land shall bear our name -- and the land shall bear our name.

Gloryland: Tales from the Old South
Early on the soundtrack to my life came from the 1,500 miles of mountain range called Appalachia. It was the blues, the hymns, the folk ballads and spirituals that haunted the region like ghosts hidden in the night wind - traveling along unseen currents and carrying with it a mix of English, Scottish, Irish and African-American history and influence.

Every year we'd pack up the station wagon and head further south to visit aunts and uncles and at times search for a long lost relative rumoured to be among the living deep in the Tennessee woods. All of these excursions connected to father's upbringing in the minute border town Hazel, Kentucky.

The Great Depression whipped them out. Tobacco farming was the family business -- the other- survival. The crash of '29 left every family in peril. The farm was lost -- the kids barely had enough food on the table to encourage physical growth and decisions had to be made who would attend school and who would work the fields.

Gloryland ~ Tales from the Old South is my pastoral portrait of family -- the family that tilled the land and for better or worse endured the history and conditions in a region where thousands of lives were spent, racism institutionalized, a genuine mistrust of government prevailed and a belief problems should be solved through resourcefulness. Beyond the hardships it was a place where song and sound illuminated people's lives with joy, humility, aspirations and situations.

There is always a body of water nearby connecting people.
Down by the river there were baptisms and picnics -- lover's quarrels the occasional burial. The devil was everywhere -- at least that's what the preacher saw and ranted about Sunday morning. Further south was gator land -- places you never sink a foot into a pool of mud. Farthest south, the smell of burning cane fields sweetened the midnight air.

There were coal miner's strikes that would burst into to all out war. Near the rails hobos rode the boxcars through the lush countryside looking for the occasional meal and handyman work. Along the way there were the juke joints, chicken shacks, forgotten plantations, overgrown ante bellum castles, and more churches than countable.

The piano was the centerpiece - the recorder of history - the spokesman -- the outlandish showman rarely contained. You boogied, you ragged, you waltzed and you embraced. It was a new music born deep in the hills, languid small town streets and bustling seaports of the old south.
Gloryland is my sensory recollection communicated in twelve solo piano tone poems with contemporary thought.

~ Bill King ~

GLORYLAND: Tales from the Old South - music available @
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/glor...

Recorded in Toronto at The Royal Theatre on May 13, 2012
video: Stephen Smith
http://www.mycompass.ca
http://twitter.com/mycompasstv

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