Loaded up my car and put back home behind me
Got a good headstart to where the world won't find me
Got a good headstart to where the world won't find me
Soothing sun and salty spray wash away the everyday
And I know everything will be okay
When I see pelicans on the wind
Pouches packed travelin'
No looking back at where they've been
Rest a while then gone again
Where the blacktop ends
And the sand begins
Pelicans
Six-pack choir singing songs at sunset
Around a driftwood fire with new old friends I just met
The tide has turned I can feel the change It's the perfect end to a perfect day
When gliding gracefully above the waves
I see pelicans on the wind
Pouches packed travelin'
No looking back at where they've been
Rest a while then gone again
Where the blacktop ends
And the sand begins
We're like pelicans
Where the blacktop ends
And the sand begins
We're like pelicans on the wind
Pouches packed travelin'
No looking back at where they've been
Rest a while then gone again
Where the blacktop ends
And the sand begins
We're like pelicans on the wind
We're like pelicans travelin'
We're like pelicans gone again
Pelicans
(Dad Zone Music ASCAP/Flatbilly Songs ASCAP)
While not exactly "To a Waterfowl" by William Cullen Bryant, this song that I wrote with Roy Holdren also compares some humans to certain water-dwelling birds.
I'm not quite sure when the idea first came to me, but I am certain that Bryant's poem was one of the last things on my mind when it did. I can't say that I never read it, but it had probably been 40 years or more ago. I re-read it in preparation for this piece, and will probably read it several more times. I'm not at all certain that it is only about what that graduate student teaching English at East Carolina University led me to believe.
I have included Bryant's poem at the end end of this piece. I suggest sitting down with it when you you have the time and headspace to absorb and ponder.
A producer friend of mine had invited me to join him and his artist on his houseboat for a writing session. They were looking for country songs on the coastal side of things. We tossed ideas around, and settled on a hook I came up with. (That's what I was there for, after all.) "It's A Shore Thing" seemed to be just what they were looking for. ("This ain't no summertime fling, it's a shore thing") We started pitching each other coastal imagery that would fit into a boy-meets-girl-and-yes-it's-true love scenario.
At some point, I mentioned a pelican, and my friend went off on me.
"Pelican? Seagulls are the iconic ocean bird. It has to be a seagull!"
I responded that you could find seagulls at the landfill, but if you saw pelicans, you had truly arrived at the coast.
"'Pelican' is such a clunky word! Nobody's ever going to sing a song about a pelican."
Well, it was his session, and all I really had invested was my time, so I acquiesced. But I also accepted his unknowing challenge.
Back home, I was goofing around with my guitar, and I started singing "Pelicans on the wind".
I started thinking about pelicans more deeply. Somewhere along the way, I started thinking about what pelicans had in common with people who were living a nomadic lifestyle. I came up with most of a chorus, although it was by no means finished or polished. Fortunately for me (and for listeners) I was mere days away from a session with one of my favorite co-writers. Roy Holdren was coming in from Minnesota. He and I have written more than a few really good songs together. We have similar senses of humor and grasps of the craft. He is also a better guitarist than me, and a great singer.
I showed Roy this thing I was working on, and he jumped right in.
I'll spare you the details of the writing session, but once we were done, I banged around on the song for a couple of weeks, before taking it over to River Front Recording in Madison, Tennessee. Pat Lassiter, Tim Galloway, Mike Holmes, and Will Ellis helped me turn the song into the recording at the top of the page. If you haven't listened, what are you waiting for?
Here's another totally unrelated pelican story.
Back when I lived in North Carolina, and our children were still quite young, we used to to rent a house at the beach (usually in the Emerald Isle area) for a week every summer. One year, we had some extra space, so I invited a friend down for the last half of the week. Harlan Needham is a multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, and we had done a bit of guitar/mandolin duo work in some venues around the Raleigh area. I told him to come on down. We could relax on the beach in the daytime, and go out picking at some bars in the evenings.
We were sitting out in the sand one afternoon, when Harlan said "I haven't seen a pelican in forever." As if right on cue, about thirteen pelicans came floating by on the breeze in a lazy formation.
Harlan didn't miss a beat. "I haven't seen a pterodactyl in forever."
The pterodactyls never showed up, but years later this song did.
And I'm still trying to decipher this poem.
To a Waterfowl
By William Cullen Bryant
Whither, 'midst falling dew
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark they distant flight, to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek'st though the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power, whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day they wings have fanned
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among they fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest
Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form, yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given
And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight
In the lone way that I must trace alone
Will lead my steps aright.
