A Baffled King Composing

If you knew me 15 years ago, you wouldn't have known that I was en route to becoming a Singer Songwriter.  You might have known that I listened to music other than Hip Hop, and it was there I expressed the emotional depth I felt Hip Hop was in denial of.  There was one album that upon hearing the first few tracks I was swept away, thinking I'd found a blend of the swagger and soul Hip Hop borrowed from musically, but the transcendent emotional expression I'd grown attached to in Alternative music.  Enter Grace.  Enter Jeff Buckley.  What Kurt Cobain ushered into my life, Eddie Vedder bolstered, and Chris Cornell cemented, Jeff Buckley refined and elevated.  His ability to appeal to the urban sophisticate tastes made him a revelation to my ears and my soul.  Spring 1995, Last Goodbye was my swan song of choice, though it had no place in my life given I was always on the losing side of unrealized, unrequited, puppy-love.  But my radio-recorded tape of the song was all I needed for years to come.  I didn't experience Grace until via G. K. I made the acquaintance of Mir & Steph while visiting the Ceramics lab in Barnett Hall, and the music they were playing basically snake-charmed me.  "What is this?!?"  "It's Jeff Buckley." As I listened I thought, and maybe even uttered, "This is the perfect music."

His death had occurred the year prior, and I remember the somber feeling that struck me when he was initially reported missing with little other detail.  I was passing the TV in the SUB, or one of the Student Lounges in Blanton-Nason Hall.  It was akin to the feeling I had that same academic year when Tupac was reported shot, and roughly a week later, reported to have succumb to his injuries.  Casual walks to and fro passing by television sets in public places, this is how I encountered (arguably) the 2nd and 3rd most significant deaths of musicians for my generation.  The two men have inspired near cult-like devotion from their fan bases across generations.  Today I was confronted with my own admiration and inspiration regarding Jeff Buckley in an obvious but unexpected setting.

A guitar student of mine showed up with songs to learn.  The first was Honey Bee by Black Shelton, a song I only know from watching the Voice last year off and on. I masked my disappointment that it wasn't a cover of Tom Petty's jam of the same name from Wildflowers, which I and a friend would perform as a duo in the infancy of my singing days.  He said the other song was from 1994, which put me in the mind of Tom Petty since Wildflowers released in 94'-95' if I remember correctly, and was a grand record that I loved.  Then I saw the Title...  He wanted me to each him how to play a Jeff Buckley song.  I basically taught myself how to sing in my upper register (correctly) listening to his work, based my songwriting on his particular nuances: 6/8 time signature, arabesque chord voicing and what not.  But I was always skittish about learning his or anyone's songs in full.  His voice was unrivaled.  I found my limits singing along and hearing my voice vanish where his continued to ascend.  I heard countless singers adopt his mannerisms, and find abilities that they might never have explored if not for his fearless exploration of his gift.  Many failed to ascend, and others grasped the torch and carried on the inspired pursuit of near perfection.

All that said, Hallelujah has been done to death.  I believe I may have heard Tom Waits' version prior to Buckley's thanks to G. K. , but after Jeff Buckley's passing, and each labels attempts to find talents with similar potential to inspire vocally and stylistically, the glut of cover version took its toll. The first to give me pause was Rufus Wainwright's version used in Shrek, it simply seemed too soon to promote a cover of a popularized cover from an artist that seemed to be positioned to appeal to a similar demographic.  It would have been like having some Nu-Metal band do a version of Sweet Dreams in the vein of Marylin Manson's cover.  Double foul on Rufus for covering Across The Universe not long after Fiona Apple did so.  I completely checked out after seeing Gavin Degraw debut on Later with Carson Daly and perform Hallelujah solo on the piano as an encore.  It was reminiscent of Wainwright's rendition, and a precursor to it becoming the go-to singing competition "obscure" audition song... until it ceased to be obscure via Jason Castro, who elevated Jeff Buckley's version to the top of the Itunes charts 14 years after it was released.  Hallelujah indeed.  Now it's an American Standard.  It's a song I would never want to learn, right up there with all those "Guaranteed to be played at your local open mic (particularly ones frequented by college students)" like:

Waltz #2
I Will Follow You Into the Dark
Delilah
Good Riddance
Redemption Song
Ryan Adam's take on Oasis's Wonderwall
*Dylan Song*
etc.

I am there to teach what they want to learn, so I took the chord version he had with the lyrics and worked through it with him, actually singing along as i played.  It was a moment where I was willing to let my affection for Jeff Buckley's music shine through in an obvious fashion instead of small references to ways I empathized with his upbringing in one song i'd written, or my mourning his loss, and therefore being inspired to keep the Golden Promise in his honor in another.  So, outside of the main verse of Mojo Pin, which I learned years ago, and teased at my earliest performances, I finally learned to play the gist of a Jeff Buckley song, and sang it as he did, in the presence of another human being.  Now I have to decide, do I teach my student to play it as Jeff did?  My student came to know of his work outside of my influence and has conveyed a sincere appreciation of it, over which we can develop a keener since of how to promote his growth as a musician.  OR, I can teach him to follow the path I chose, to recognize the inspiration, and embrace it as a call to find his own singular voice and explore and develop it in the hopes that when actualized, it will rival the execution he was so inspired by, but remain uniquely his own.  This is the quintessential human challenge, as far as I see it.  There is nothing new under the sun.  We are reconstituting universal truths, presuming new revelations, when there are none.  There is only ignorance masking enlightenment.  That being the case, if and how we ascend is of our own choosing.