Today is my wife Marina’s birthday. She has helped me in numerous ways over the almost 13 years that we’ve been together, not least with creative inspiration and support. Slumberland is a song that she partially inspired.
This one goes back to 2019. I wrote it on a trip we took together up the coast from Barcelona into the Emporda region. On these trips, I often travel with a baritone ukulele, as it’s easier to fit in a packed car than a full-sized acoustic. A baritone ukulele is tuned like the four highest strings of a standard guitar (D, G, B, E). I’ve found that losing those lower two strings opens up new shapes and ideas, and I have composed a number of songs on this instrument. I mean, Keith Richards cuts the low E string off all of his guitars, so there are definitely precedents in the world of rock ‘n’ roll.
This demo, which was recorded back in 2020, is pretty rough around the edges, but it’s the most fully realised version I have to date. I played the baritone ukulele for the acoustic parts, and then my tenor guitar for the electric lead lines, which have a rotary speaker effect on them. The vocal has a chorus effect added, which is something I’ve used again since this first experiment.
Lyrically, there were quite a few inspirations, including the 1920 German expressionist film, ‘The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari’ and Guy Madden’s dreamlike documentary ‘My Winnipeg’ (2007), and also the King James Bible (which was an early and probably unwise name consideration for the Orange Peel project), and, finally, my wife, Marina.
Happy Birthday to her. Xx.
Lyrics:
A world of somnambulists.
Been trying to wake up
for too long.
Sometimes I’m paralysed
like my Rapid Eye Movement
has gone wrong.
Ten conversations.
An upstairs party
happening in my mind.
Guess it’s the same for everyone.
We’re all sleepwalking.
Life gets sadder
as you get older.
That’s the way it is.
You’re only as happy
as your least happy child.
That’s what my mother says.
I don’t have any children.
There are still monsters under my bed.
Shake off the cobwebs.
Shake the snow globe again.
In the land of Nod,
East of Eden.
Except you.
Can you wake me up too?
And help
to stop this endless snooze.
The only way out of Slumberland
is with you.
Or else I’ll sleep through,
half awake, nodding off,
not even in the room.
So lift this endless snooze.
The only way out of Slumberland
is with you.
—
JCV
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