“When you start getting old,
the only thing that keeps you going
is passion for something.”
Bobby Bare is passionate about songs.
“I’ve always loved really good songs, and I was able to find them. When I hear a great song, I’ll always know exactly where I was when I heard it; it’s like time stops.”
That happens to me. A movie unfolds in my head.
At 78, Bobby Bare is one of the newest members of the revered Country Music Hall of Fame.
Bare’s songwriting partners are a walking library of style ~ Tom T. Hall, Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller, Billy Joe Shaver. And Shel Silverstein, one of the most eccentric songwriters ever to commute to Nashville.
Bare and Silverstein, both members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, collaborated on several albums. Bare says that Silverstein was always jotting down notes ~ on the top of menus, in the white spaces on the sports page, on his clothes, on his hand.
Silverstein wrote all the songs on the album Old Dogs. Bobby Bare, Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, and Jerry Reed must have been grinnin’ like possums eatin’ sweet taters making this CD.
And every one of their mature twang-lovin’ fans is happy as a dead pig in the sunshine that they did.
.
The album’s closing ballad, Time, is bittersweet and wise.
Who needs new tricks? The old tricks are still plenty good enough.
Toni 11/20/13
Day 20
John would have loved this blog post. The old country crooners kept him tight in their vocal embrace. Although I am first an opera lover, I know all those country artists and their music because he lived for their musical sounds.
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Ronnie, the stories draw me in. And the lives of the musicians are rich with fodder,as Patty likes to say. Very rich.
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Thanks Toni! I have been a Waylon Jennings fan for at least 40 years!
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Sayra, I love the storytelling in these tunes. Google “Elvis Has Left the Building” sometime.
Wow, 40 years..you must be one of us… unexpectedly older but still dancing! 🙂
Toni
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