Greg Bales

Juárez

I have very little musical training. In high school, all of my friends were in band, but I was only a band hanger-on, so much so that I even took music theory as a senior. I was clueless. Having avoided dances with a passion, I had no rhythm; having never played any instrument at all, I had no idea what a chord was. I muddled my way through the class by memorizing chord progressions and relying on 1990s-era composition software to play the notes I was placing on staffs. But music is made of the steady pump of blood through the veins, not the rote patterns I was learning. My compositions were leaden. If they had any heart at all, it was made of tin. Things improved in college when I learned to play guitar. I also learned then to sight-read vocal music well enough that I could serve passably as a songleader in the a capella church I then attended. But I never practiced guitar enough to learn any style particularly well, and if you listened close, my singing would often waver in unpleasant enough ways. As it stands—and I say this with deep regret—I continue to have no soul. I can’t groove because I can’t keep a beat; I can’t riff because I can’t stay in key.

But it is every man’s duty to challenge himself, so when I started this writing contest, I thought I might attempt to write a song. Not just a lyric, but a complete musical composition with verses and a chorus, maybe even a bridge! I thought, how hard could it be? The answer: Really hard! To find the key that fits the emotional heft the thing should have; to compose a melody that doesn’t make everyone else pull their hair out; to write a lyric that can be sung: These are all important. And then there’s revision process, which is particularly difficult if you are ill equipped to judge whether one revision is better than another. And then—and then—one must perform the thing! Writing a song was a foolhardy idea, and foolishly, I pursued it to the end.

When I began, I knew I wanted something melancholic. I thought a lot about “Bury Me Beneath the Willow,” and it was the rhythm to that song which got me started, though my final song (to its discredit) shows hardly any influence of that masterpiece. I wrote the lyric first—it seemed easier—then improvised a melody until I stumbled on something I liked. What I liked at first and for the longest time was a slow tempo, almost a dirge. It wasn’t until I started to record did I realize I hated singing it, much less listening to it. So I picked up the pace. What I came up with was this (MP3 download) badly recorded, poorly played demo. The song is titled “Juárez.” You should be able to play it here:

These are the lyrics, which, yes, I did mis-sing in the recording. Did I mention it was poorly played?

And so that’s that. Writing this song was fun enough that I might write another someday (but I won’t record again until I become a better performer).