When you’re an opinionated songwriter, you sometimes find yourself wishing another person’s song had gone in a different direction. In my case, I’ll never forget hearing the intro to Smokey Bastard’s Baba Yaga. The Dreadnoughts were driving to a gig in Kelowna BC, maybe, JUST MAYBE drinking heavily in the back of the van, and SB had sent us the mixes of their new album. And this otherworldly waltz that was so FUCKING good came on. As I heard it for the first time I knew for sure that this song was going to be the most badass power waltz that anyone ever wrote. ONE two three TWO two three, CRASH, BANG, POW! TO THE MOOOOOOOON
But I should have remembered that this was Smokey Bastard, the World’s Least Predictable Folkpunk Band, and after it gets through maybe the strongest minor key waltz I’ve ever heard in the genre, it immediately leaps into a kind of balkan/Reggaeton beat thing with a bunch of shouting and rhythmic stuff. Which I ended up loving, but I’ll never forget that initial impression: oh no. No, this was supposed to be a full power waltz, man.
So a few years later I was writing Roll and Go and I had these two waltzes I wanted to stick together. I realized that one of them was basically the intro from “Baba Yaga”. And I did what any self-respecting and ethical songwriter would do after stealing another band’s material: I just kept on going, changed a couple of notes and called it a day.
Get fucked, SB, if you didn’t want me to steal the riff you should have made the song a full on power waltz. Also, two of you, please play bass and mandolin with us on our upcoming UK tour. kthanx
Et Voila, le power waltz:
The lyrics aren’t hard to decipher: this song is about the revolutionary spirit, it’s about 1789 and 1917 and about any group of horribly oppressed people who manages to band together and really strike back against their former masters:
So it's haul away, comrades, ropes over blistering shoulders
As the wind shakes the barley and carries on right through the corn
And we ain't gonna stop 'til we are satisfied soldiers
Rich men, big men, fattened up, happy, reborn
It’s about the glory, the sense of pride and accomplishment, and it’s about what inevitably happens when those people (or their self-proclaimed representatives anyway) manage to secure power for themselves, all regardless of which “side” of the political spectrum they are on.
You know, you read a little history, you write a folkpunk album, it’s a living.
The instrumental tune in the middle of this song is also very important to me. I wrote it after an incredible night in Athens, Greece. Out on the town with my dear old mum we ran into these Rebetiko bouzouki players singing old Greek rebel songs. My mum informed them that I was a musician and they invited me up and we did a version of Tom Waits’ “Chocolate Jesus” on a guitar and two bouzoukis.
The sound of the double-harmony greek bouzouki haunted me for days. So I wrote a haunting tune I called “Salonika” that The Dreadnoughts recorded, and it almost made it as a slow waltz on Foreign Skies. It ended up being the lead instrumental on “The Storm” instead. Paid subscribers, enjoy the old Dreadnoughts demo!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Roll And Go: Dreadnoughts Blog to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.