"The Day Deserved" backstory booklet features lyrics and credits, along with extra photos, poetry, and dialogue from Doug Hoekstra on the making of each track. Full color, 10 pages, measuring 6 x 8 ,this was also designed by Bob Delevante in tandem with the CD. Special pre-order - just add $5 to your order for digital download or CD to cover shipping/handling) and will go out with the release. Limited supply
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about
Before my parents passed, I recorded many hours of interviews with them, family questions, about their lives and the times they lived. Recently, I was driving along listening to my Dad from the past coming to the present to tell me about his brother Herbie, who worked for a short time as a gandy dancer, on the railway in Chicago. Apparently, it was a terrible job, very hard, and he quit after a week. I didn’t remember this particular family tale and I wasn’t even sure what a gandy dancer was, so I looked it up. Herbie is not Eddie, the rest of this story is simply a noir tale I made up, but I thank my Dad for giving me the idea from then to now, as if he was just waiting to lay it on me, from the great beyond.
This was the last song we finished for the record; I felt like the bass/drums were solid, but that it didn’t have enough layers and that it was probably a song that needed to deviate more from the original path. When the pandemic hit, however, necessity became the mother of invention as we went back to the drawing board, flying in overdubs, with Wurlitzer (me), guitars (Dave), congas (Chris), and sax (Jimmy) getting added to the mix and creating a whole new stew.
Next up, I’d had this idea of doing round robin vocals, like something you’d hear from the Band or the Staple Singers or Prince (1999). I just had a one-take scratch vocals in place, but we flew the backing over to Hannah to sing all the way through and did the same, for an old friend of mine, stellar bluesman Preacher Boy. Then Dave and I listened through and picked parts and put them together and it made sense. So this track really has a nice evolution, from my Uncle Herbie to my folk’s recordings to the studio to the “community” created during the pandemic.
lyrics
Gandy Dancer
Eddie was a gandy dancer –
He only lasted a week
Driving nails, making peanuts, he said
My time ain’t worth the grief
Took a cab to see his girl
Spent the night half alone
Drinking wine, making love
In somebody’s home
Interrupted by the phone
Back in the day, remember
Receivers on the wall
Voices echo through the building
Between apartments in the hall
Shady and expensive
On the line was a certain man
You still working that railroad job?
Because I’ve got a handsome task
It was a complicated plan
Gandy Dancer, Gandy Dancer
Eddie was a gandy dancer
And tried to keep it cool, but
In a day he’d make more money
Than a year as a working fool
She said, oh, baby don’t you do it
He ignored her desperate pleas
Working on a straight job
Was close to slavery
Pinching pennies getting squeezed
Gandy Dancer, Gandy Dancer
Little did he know his neighbor
Was an eager beaver cop
Who loved to play canary
And was prone to eavesdrop
He never liked Eddie anyways
Had a thing for his girlfriend
The cops were waiting armed and ready
The bank job met an early end
Up the river Eddie was sent
Eddie was a gandy dancer
But he only lasted a week
Driving nails, making peanuts, he said
His time wasn’t worth the grief
Couldn’t see his girl no more
Always alone
Stuck inside four walls
In somebody else’s home
Always waiting for the phone
Gandy Dancer, Gandy Dancer
credits
from The Day Deserved,
released April 30, 2021
Chris Benelli – drums, congas, percussion
Jimmy Bowland - sax
Dave Coleman – guitars, synth guitar
Hannah Fairlight - vocals
Doug Hoekstra – rhythm guitars, organ, Wurlitzer, vocals
Paul Slivka – bass
Preacher Boy - vocals
Recorded by Dave Coleman at Howard’s Apartment Studio and various locations in Nashville, Franklin, and Santa Cruz
Doug Hoekstra’s singular musical persona sets sympathetic narratives against understated vocals, memorable melodies, and
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