I’ve been working on a new song called Green Glove. It’s sort of a silly song that I made up last winter when we were painting our house, and a green glove literally fell out of the coat closet and onto my head. I just started spontaneously singing it and we had a good laugh. Days later I was still singing it, and it seemed like it was a catchy tune so I decided to work on it and record it. The song is on the short side and deliberately repetitive, with one verse and a two-word chorus, in contrast to my last song which was very verbose. I took as the model a song like Steely Dan’s “The Fez”, or maybe some Zappa jazz. But it has a big ol’ piano solo in the middle and a sort of buildup ending and none of the repeats are quite the same.
Also this was something of a departure from my usual way of arranging. In the past I’ve tended to work out the structure of a song to the point where I can sing it the whole way thru and accompany myself on piano, and that gives me the skeleton of the song I can use as a basis for arranging and recording. But for this one the arrangement was more mutable and I did a good amount of experimenting once I started tracking. To some extent this was inevitable because there’s a fair amount of layering going on in the vocals and in the instruments in the second half of the tune. So now I’m almost there. The only thing remaining before the frst rough mix is to lay down the horn section parts.
…
Green Glove
Once I found my own true love
Beneath a shady apple tree
And while green apples fell on my head from above
She wore a
Green glove green glove
Green glove green glove
Green glove, green glove
Green glove