I love classic folk and country songs. I listened to so many at camp growing up, songs like “Rocky Top” or “Country Roads” or John Prine’s “Paradise” that tug at the heartstrings and make you yearn for the simple things. A really good folk song gives you the feeling that it’s been around forever. It’s like a pebble in a creek, worn smooth from the tumbling of being sung again and again.

In 2018, I wanted to see if I could write one. I thought, well, somebody wrote these songs, and trying to fake the timeless feel sounded fun. My songwriting process started in Albania, of all places, when I was finally bored enough for inspiration to strike. A few weeks later I had a finished song. It was my first song with lyrics. I’ll show it to you at the end.

I started out writing a slow, soulful ballad about a mother’s love for a child about to venture out on his own. I tried to establish a sense of place (“This river, my child, is winding and wild…”), and make plain the mother’s fondness for her son, and her regret but acceptance of his leaving her because that’s the way of the world. I wrote a verse like that. Then I got stuck.

Truth is, I found it kind of painful to be that sincere. I wasn’t really able to show my feelings back then, and it felt so, so uncool to be that simple and direct without twisting into irony or flexing my intellect. The result was that I wrote one verse of a sincere ballad about a mother’s love, and then two verses and three choruses where the mother goes on to tell the child that the one thing they should really remember is that, if they ever get in trouble, they should eat a big blob of whatever goo they find lying around.

I told myself I was making fun of folk superstition and old wives’ tales, of motherly chidings to not walk past black cats or under ladders. I don’t think that really shines through. It’s a fun song and one I still listen to fondly, but I cringe a bit. I wasn’t much of a storyteller yet, and there are some things I know now that I didn’t back then. I wanted to write a song poking fun at how true motherly love is blended together with the most ridiculous advice (@Mom). Instead of switching from real wisdom all the way over to goo-mode, I’d interleave the two: a few lines of good advice, then wait, hold the phone, yes, it’s back to goo. It takes genuine love to hold both things and balance them in writing.

Well, you can’t change the past. As promised, all the way from 2018, here’s Goo.

Credit to my brother Sam for the guitar backing. The other instruments are actually the same harmonica, played way low for the bass and high for the solo. Thanks also to Bennett Witcher, who’s sent this recording back to me multiple times after I’ve lost it. For your services, I hereby confer upon you the title of Eternal Steward of the Goo.