Spring Brings Good Things: New Video - "Kitty Alone and I"
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| Mom took photos of me after I shot the video for "Kitty Alone and I" |
My mom and I have been staying with my aunt and uncle in North Georgia for about 2 and 1/2 weeks in a town called “Chatsworth,” about 30 minutes South of Chattanooga. I desperately needed some time off the road, and since we don’t have a “home,” our family is kind to put a roof over our head while we regroup. It’s a new year and there’s so much to do and catch up on: booking, writing new songs, learning other songs, and journaling about our journeys. You know, things you can’t easily accomplish when you’re riding in a car or shuffling to the next hotel room.
My aunt and uncle have a nice RV trailer they keep next to the house under a tin roof, and it’s provided a great cocoon for me the past couple of weeks while I’ve been making spread sheets of music venues and recording material for my new vlog, “Hard Travelin’: A Folksinger’s Vlog.” As always when I visit, I enjoy spending time stroking the kitties that live out on the their back porch. I’ve chased the neighbor’s guinea hens out of the yard for disrupting my recording processes and watched another neighbor’s tractor plow over their field of yellow buttercups and reseed it for corn season. The homeschooled kids next door chase their menagerie of birds, squawking like them as they run to and fro in the yard. So far, I’ve seen/heard they have hens and roosters, a peacock, and a turkey living back there. It’s lively in the country when there’s a lot of wildlife running around!
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| The view from the back porch 4/30/23 |
I’m amazed how fast winter becomes spring. It’s miraculous. It reminds me of watching a quick-change artist revealing her next gown. I know God’s doing it, but I can’t pinpoint where the change actually happens! When we arrived, the knock-out roses were just coming into bloom across from the RV. The whole line of them used to be the decor around an above-ground swimming pool where pool parties were held in the summer. The roses are hot pink and numerous, and there are some light pink ones on the side of the house that are just dulcet! We are still waiting to see if the snowballs will make their appearance this year. But, so far springtime is coming along nicely!
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| Knock-Out Roses |
You know that feeling that spring gives you when the breezes run through the trees and grasses like a slow wave picking up powerfully and invigorating the world? Sometimes that excitement gives me the energy to move forward and create something. I had a little dream to record a full video of a song called “Kitty Alone and I” and originally thought to record it down at the neighbors fence-line where they pasture their horses. There are some voluminous blackberry bushes next to the fence and they initially grabbed my eye and I imagined recording the video there. I was in no position to record anything that day, but I said to myself “tomorrow I’ll record the video.”
“Kitty Alone and I” is a song that I picked up from a folksinger out in North Dakota last summer. As soon as I started hearing hims sing the song, the sweetness of the subject and the cheerful, dance-y music endeared me to it. I wanted to learn the song myself and the perfect time to learn it came up while I was performing at Dollywood in the fall. I listened to a few recordings and started learning the lyrics. It is said to have Irish origins but was picked up by the Carter Family in America and was changed to reflect the regional culture. The song is composed to be sung by a man and is about 2 square-dancers, as understood by the calls in the song, “promenade” and “do-si-do.” The narrator is talking about his girlfriend “Kitty” who is a dancer and he’s reflecting on her charming way, dreaming about the date they have planned for “tomorrow night,” and hoping to marry her in the future.
When I started singing the song in my nightly sets at the DreamMore (Pigeon Forge, TN,) Dollywood’s hotel, I would have children come back to see my shows another night in the week, so I would ask them what song they would like to hear that I played when they saw me before, and they would say: “Cat.” I knew which song they meant, of course, and I loved that they remembered the song that way. Whenever I play it for kids, they all get twisty and turn-y and start to dance around. The song just makes everyone feel good, and kids are usually the ones who let the music move them.
I began thinking of what I’d wear in the video. I brought a bunch dresses with me in my suitcase in case performances came up during our time down here in Georgia. One of them is a dress I found at the Southern Thrift in Donelson before it recently closed down. I’ve been thrifting at that store since I was about 14 or 15 years old and it’s always been a fun activity for me when I come “to town” (Nashville.) I hadn’t worn it anywhere, yet, so wearing a new dress for the new video seemed appealing. It also occurred to me that it matched with the hot pink knock-out roses, so I changed my idea for the location of the shoot and pulled the dress out of my suitcase for the following day.
It gave me a thrill to look forward to fulfilling my plan, but when I woke in the morning I had forgotten all about it. But, when the spark of remembrance hit me, I grinned and planned to shoot the video in the afternoon. I could tell all of the element were lining up splendidly as the time of day came that I wanted to record. The cats were in a good mood, the weather was cooperative, the tractor had stopped grinding, even the guinea hens were far off in the field pecking at the worms the tractor had just tilled up. So, I ran to the car and pulled out the tripod, grabbed my vintage suitcase to sit on, and some cheese to bait the cats, which I sort of thought I might have as extras in the video. Mom came prowling around with her camera and clicked a few shots and then waited for me to finish my filming. Within 2 or 3 takes, I had a video I liked!
It was perfect timing, too, because the tractor cranked up, again, and the fowls next door started getting squawky, and worse, the clouds that were pleasantly passing by started to form into rainclouds and the temperature began dropping.
I released the video April 30, 2023 and you can watch it below.
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