Jamu

This song is a tribute to my English bulldog, who is about eleven years old. That’s a pretty long life for the breed, and he’s definitely showing signs of age. One of his quirks is that he goes HAM when he’s having fun; the downside is that he has to deal with the consequences the next few days. Despite some health problems (we struggled with chronic pneumonia until we could find a combination of food and elevated feeding method that prevented him from aspirating it, and he’s had arthritis forever, and he had to have surgery for his ACL which helped but left him with a limp on that leg), we manage to keep his weight in check and the most pronounced change in his behavior is that he’s become a bit crankier in his old age.

Musically, it’s fairly straightforward in E minor up until the bridge. The flat-II pops in during the chorus for some color, and of course I grab the major V7 from harmonic minor. Once the bridge hits, we modulate to the relative major (G major), then really go out on a limb and modulate to the relative minor of the home key’s parallel major (e.g., we go to C#m, the relative minor of E major, which is the parallel major of E minor), before pivoting on a IV -> iv (in C#m, II -> ii in Em) to take us out of the bridge.

I recorded the acoustic guitar and vocals on the Zoom Recorder. The lead is an overdubbed acoustic guitar part. The bass is my Kala U-Bass, and the drums are courtesy of Superior Drummer. My favorite detail is that, in the fade-out tail at the end, you can just barely hear my dog snoring, since he was sleeping in the couch behind me while I was recording the guitar parts.

Lyrics

I remember when I could hold you up in one hand

How you sleep so much but run so fast, I’ll never understand

I wish you hadn’t learned to bark, at everything, often only the dark

Guess you showed me, things don’t always go as planned

 

Bully Boy, Bully Boy, you give me snuggles, you bring me joy

You’re my Goodest Boy, and I love you

Finny Boy, my Brindly boy, even when cranky or paranoid

You’re my Bully Boy, and I love you

You’re my Bully Boy, and I love you

 

You’re getting old, it’s impossible to disregard

And it weighs me down every time you limp, when coming in from the yard

We’ll give you nothing but the best, of all the time that we have left

Though I know some days for you it can be hard

 

So come and give me snuggles with your chin

Let’s take in all the afternoon sun that we can soak in 

And we’ll banish the pain away, even if it’s only for the day

We’ll both feel like you’re a puppy once again

 Here’s a bonus photo of him and me on a trip to the Oregon coast last year.