From the recording Both Sides Of The River
GOOD LONG RAIN
“Is this a song about precipitation? Is this a song about redemption? Dehydration? Rehydration? Cremation? Temptation? Tarnation? Damnation? Flirtation? Supplication? Is this a song about hope that one’s broken heart might heal? In a drought, with wildfires all around you, maybe they all are the same thing.”
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
The American Southwest is in the midst of a historic multi-decade megadrought. At the same time, climate change- and el Niño-induced unprecedented hot weather seemingly has no immediate end in sight. Drought, rampant wildfires, mass extinctions, loss of familiar habitats, desertification…it will take much more than one wet season to turn this tide. Many are the days here in the Valley of the Sun that we wish for rain.
Earth, air and water are the three essential elements of this beautiful place. For years, we have built and grown and grown and built and poured water into the ground to decorate lawns and fairways. We have crushed the earth with bulldozers and all-terrain vehicles. We have scraped it and paved it and sold it off to anyone who would buy. We have polluted the land, water and air with pesticides, smoke and fertilizers. But now the water is running out, and the earth reminds us. The economic engine that depends on free water reminds us too. We are in uncomfortable and scary times of our own creation.
A few years ago, wildfires racing unchecked along dry-as-tinder washes and ridges threatened my little town, consuming homes and property. Every day, we watched the wildly skilled pilots flying planeload after planeload of slurry and water scooped from lakes and reservoirs. Brave crews cut lines and controlled the fires. The fires ended. But years on, still we build and still more come, and so still we build, as rivers run even drier and water tables sink farther away. My adjacent metropolitan area is home to 5 million souls. Yes, I am here too, an equally “guilty” part of that 5 million. There is simply not enough water here to sustain that. No water, no life.
Is it too late and too dry to find our redemption in a “good long rain”?
Ed Skibbe, Cave Creek
August 2023
CREDITS
Ed Skibbe: acoustic guitar, piano, high string guitar, orchestrations, vocals
Spencer Pyne: bass
Brian McClure: drums
Donny Dark: electric guitar
WRITING NOTES
I sat one night on the patio of a local watering hole, nursing a bourbon and watching as couples arrived for their “date nights.” Beautiful, lissome southwestern ladies in the company of prosperous, casually dressed men sipped tall glasses of wine and laughed and soaked up the idyllic Arizona evening.
Two hours later, humming a new romantic tune to myself, I heard an alert on the radio of an uncontrolled wildfire near our little town. Evacuations were expected any moment and people were scrambling to save themselves, their possessions and their animals. A faint red glow illuminated a ridgeline in the distance.
That evening was the start of “Good Long Rain.”
RECORDING NOTES
We tracked basic tracks (bass, drums, reference guitar-vocal) in Colorado. We recorded the lead vocal there a day or two later. I tracked keyboards and new guitars, including a high string part, in Arizona. Spencer recorded Donny’s lead electric guitars in Colorado. Mixing and editing was in Colorado. The final editing and mixing of this one was one of the last things we did on the record. Listen to the way Spencer built the soundscape of this song. It was one of the simplest sessions on the record, with fewer parts than many of the songs, but it has a powerful, subtle building dramatic arc that really supports and helps to build the story.
Man, everyone killed it on this song. Brian’s solid drum groove with Spencer’s always meticulous bass underpin the song’s pop feel. Donny’s guitar adds just the right notes of anticipation and longing…
Lyrics
GOOD LONG RAIN (Skibbe)
© 2022, Coyote Tongue Music (ASCAP)
I limped in on my last leg, the sun was nearly down
Anyone with a lick of sense had already left town
They say this place it had its day, before it all burnt up
Beautiful in its own wild way, now there’s nothing but smoke and dust
Then I saw you sitting there, the evening in your hair
Looking like a cool breeze, like something that an angel sees
Like something that the clouds might bring
Let’s make this weather change
We need a good long rain
The kind of rain that soaks you through
One to wash away the stain of all we did
And everything we knew
We need a good long rain
A good long rain
I felt my last leg giving way, I could not stop the fall
You and me, I guess we had our day, I thought we might just have them all
But now it’s good and gone, ashes and bones
Every desert storm must end, bridges break if they don’t bend
We never comprehend
What do we do now?
We need a good long rain
The kind of rain that soaks you through
One to wash away the stain of all we did
And everything we knew
We need a good long rain
A good long rain
We need a good long rain
We need a good long rain
One to really move the rocks around
Leave this world rearranged
Scrub it clean
Let the sad past drown
We need a good long rain, a good long rain
A good long rain, a good long rain