My cheeriest song ever? OK, it’s definitely in the running:

This is one of those songs that started out as just pure melody, an ascending pentatonic arpeggio that, after I heard it come out of my mouth, made me think it was cool enough to pursue further. A short while later, I’d come up with “Give it just a little bit of love”, and that was it: I knew I had a direction to take me through the rest of the song.

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) may notice that “A Little Bit Of” is not my typical style of song. For one thing, it’s undeniably sing-songy, or, to borrow a phrase Tom Ashbrook once used to describe a Michael Franti album, “happy-clappy music“. For another, it’s unironically, unapologetically encouraging and positive. As usual, The Beatles are my canonical models, and here the inspiration seems to be something like “All You Need Is Love” or “All Together Now”.

What? You’ve never heard “All Together Now”? Say no more.

At the end of the video, I express delight and gratitude for audience members dancing. The dancers in question are toddlers, children of some of the artists there at Rose Street Cooperative and Gallery, and their spontaneous cavorting lends my performance a little extra bounce. Unfortunately, the camera doesn’t catch them, but you can certainly hear them throughout the tune. That’s how you know it’s really Rose Street Coop, right?

A Little Bit Of

Give it just a little bit of time
Give it just a little bit of your sweet time
You think a single minute is an undiminished crime
Give it just a little bit of time

Give it just a little bit of thought
Give it just a little bit of your sweet thought
You’re feeling like a hero in a play without a plot
Give it just a little bit of thought

   You’re handy with a camera when you set the shutter speed
   But one objective lens is all you really need

Give it just a little bit of love
Give it just a little bit of your sweet love
You’ll hurry and you’ll scurry but you’ll never make enough
Give it just a little bit of love

   You’ve fit a bigger picture ever since the world began
   And going out of focus isn’t in the plan

Give it just a little bit of peace
Give it just a little bit of your sweet peace
Can’t you see an answer when your heart is so at ease?

Give it just a little bit of love
Give it just a little bit of thought
Give it just a little bit of time

© Copyright 2012 Nate Orshan

This version of “A Little Bit Of” was recorded live at Rose Street Cooperative and Artists’ Gallery in Burlington, Vermont, USA, on Friday, September 21, 2012.

Welcome to the birth of a new song:

Well, it may be a song when it grows up. What it is right now is a refrain I repeat over and over (“Once in a while / You get (the/that) good thing / Ain’t it a good thing?”) with a minimal acoustic guitar accompaniment.

What I notice is that, in the course of the two and a half minutes, I hear myself going from tentative to confident. As it starts, I’ve probably only sung the line a few times before deciding it’s worth trying to record, so I’m handling the lines gingerly, like a new cat I don’t know whether will purr or pounce. As the tune goes along, the refrain clicks, and I start being able to work it a bit.

And what do the lyrics mean? Well, the clay hasn’t hardened yet, so there’s no telling its final shape. Actually…that’s not really true. You can tell by the measured pace, by the cadence, and by its call and response form that it’ll probably want to be some kind of soul tune, a slow jam. That suggests it’s probably about something romantic, clicking with somebody, a relationship song. Or maybe it’s about, y’know, knitting a sweater.

If you’re interested in seeing how some (of my) songs start out, this is a perfect primer.