Episode #224: Old Horse Grey (Song starts at 3:45 )
There’s a state of mind you get into when you’re doing something creative like writing a song lyric, composing the accompanying music & arranging the instruments during the recording process. You’re right in the moment. Honouring what you’ve already created, you’re asking constant questions to guide you to what’s next. The questions come from feeling. And the answers just seem to appear and fall into place like they were meant to be.
Welcome to the art of songwriting. It’s a reflection of life itself, by it’s very nature: we ask questions as we go through our lives. Taking responsibility for our actions thus far, we ask “What’s next?” And the answer? what will be. The oldest answer has always been: to just be in the now. And let what will be, be.
In the country I find it easy to find that pace - just walking. Like an old horse. No rush.
The old horse grey lyrics were inspired by the horse that, until recently, lived in the paddock across the road from our house.
The school children called out to him, fed him apples as they walked to school.
It really struck a chord with me: when I was a primary school kid, there were 2 horses in the paddock opposite our house. One was brown, and one was grey.
I chose to call the song Old Horse Grey, as it was about my childhood as well. Also it sounded more poetic than ‘old brown horse’ (the horse across the road here in 2024 in Australia was brown).
Anyway, the time came when he passed away. We all miss him.
There’s a few lines about the passing of time in the song - and this: the noise of trucks, the spread of the city.
Old horse grey, he shakes his head as if he knows…
'Old Horse Grey' is song #9 on the new album 'River Walking'.
I wrote the lyrics (or most of them) and sent off to Paul Dredge, my co songwriting buddy, knowing that Paul would come up with just the right country feel for the song, I didn’t tell him this. I just knew.
Then Paul stopped and left the chorus (or is it the bridge?) for me. I ended up steering it though to the end, adding more lyrics.
You can hear this process on this episode. I have included the audio of Paul’s initial sketched start, and my answers.
You’ll also, of course, hear the finished album track.
I’ve written about the song in this week’s blog post.
www.petepascoe.wordpress.com - and I’ve included the lyrics as usual.
The end result is a song which Paul and I are really happy with. It’s a mellow listen. Also in this episode, I have included a wee funny story about a bit of horse riding I did as a child, in NZ.
That’s the great thing about song writing, so many layers are in there, it’s like looking through a photo album, listening back to a song I’ve written the lyrics for.
It was a real pleasure to write this one with Paul. I hope you enjoy listening to how Old Horse Grey came to be. Here we go…