SMALL WORLD GETTING SMALLER

SMALL WORLD GETTING SMALLER written by Ric Hickey Odds don’t get much longer, baby, But our love’s got no brakes It weren’t a race to the altar, baby, but we ran all the way A death trip in vivid living color, baby girl, you was heavy but a featherweight

Treasure trove north of your garter, baby, but my mind got lost My mind got lost on the way Night crawler in the parlour, baby, a tiki bar by the bay Double shot down in a swallow baby, chase it with Tanqueray Sloppy drunken run for the border, baby, skinny dip in the lake I get a couple more fat cat lawyers, babe, they make it go They make it go away Wandered off down Bourbon Holler, baby, ‘bout a year ago today Baby boy came back a brawler, babe, his hay-maker makin’ hay Not as far gone as some of y’all are, babe, sundowning at the break of day Fats Waller ain’t Mahler, babe, but it won’t always be It won’t always be that way Jupiter ain’t the Rock Of Gibraltar, babe, a cul de sac ain’t the Milky Way I’ve seen a tempest in a teacup, babe, but your love takes the cake Now I’ll be your steamroller, babe, if you’ll be my Fay Wray I’m not just another night prowler, babe, so let’s not drag Let’s not drag the lake Small world gettin’ smaller, baby, smaller every day But my sunny disposition start to falter, babe, when you talk that way Okay next caller hey baby what you want me to play? How ‘bout some Little Walter, baby? My Babe, My Babe - This song started out as a lyrical experiment. First, I had a single line that I liked: “Small world gettin’ smaller, baby. Smaller everyday.” I wanted to take the cadence, the rhyme scheme, and the syllable count and see how many lines I could come up with that repeated those elements. Like, “Night crawler in the parlour, baby. Tiki bar by the bay.” Or “Wandered off down Bourbon Holler, baby. ‘Bout a year ago today.” Once I had 25 or 30 lines I liked that fit this criteria, I thought of the old “cut ups” method that William S. Burroughs once used. In his case, he would take a piece of short fiction, say a few paragraphs or more, and with scissors cut the paper into strips along each line of prose. Sometimes he would cut up the individual lines into smaller chunks as well. Then he would throw the pieces into the air over his desk and however they landed was how he would let the piece be in its final draft. I’m sure he took as many liberties as he wished, perhaps tossing the strips as many times as he wanted until they settled into a sequence he found to his liking. I know Adrian Belew has used this method too for his lyrics. But I digress. There was no linear story or implied narrative until I cut up and tossed lyrics in the air, allowing myself to make only one change. The chord change is a Blues riff in Drop D tuning that I had been playing around with. It is one of my favorites, particularly because the short story implied by the randomization of my lyrics is something that came from my brain even though I never truly thought up this story line in my conscious mind. I wrote the lyrics but not the story. ~rh Here is streaming audio and FREE (Name-Your-Price) download: