Song # 1: Give a Penny, Take a Penny

The beginning sketch of ‘Give a Penny, Take a Penny’

I joined Peter Mulvey’s songwriter club Patreon page on a Sunday, the first song was due on a Tuesday. The prompt for the song was “I just work here”.

The song just started to pour out of me. It was exhilarating and a huge rush. I wrote the first verse very quickly, without knowing where it was going or what I wanted it to be. I was imagining a character working a cash register and finding pride in the little details. It was a feeling I remember having as a teenager working at a coffee shop. I littered the first verse with details “Skoal can”, the father finding faith in the bible, the main character having the Mom’s wedding ring. (Where’s the Mom?, Who is the Mom?) These details were little bread crumbs that allowed me to write the rest of the song.

Eventually I figured out that the Mom had passed away when the main character was a teenager and this created a divide in the family. The father ‘found faith in the bible’, providing him comfort but also separating him from the main character in the song. Instead of faith, the main character copes with vices, (the Skoal can) and memories. They (she? he? I never figured out the gender of the main character, although I assume people will assume it’s a male, since I’m singing the song) clearly worshipped their mother and can relive every childhood memory and lesson learned, but ultimately they are stuck in these memories and stuck in the bakery. Everyone loves them, they see the mother in their eyes, but ultimately the main character doesn’t want to be there. They feel a responsibility to serve their mother’s memory, to help their father run the business, but doesn’t feel the same connection that everyone else does. They are trapped in an idealized past, not wholly aware of the present.

Musically, this song does some of the basics of what I’ve always done with my singer/songwriter stuff. As a teenager I studied James Taylor’s fingerpicking and chords (before the days of YouTube, when you really had to work to find videos on the internet), and this song uses those techniques. The opening chord is one of my favorite chords, a G9 (a G with an A in it, for those who didn’t take or don’t teach music theory). The wordless ‘chorus’ follows a descending pattern based off a C minor chord, which also sets up the chromatic bass line in the bridge.

This demo was recorded in one take by putting a couple of mics in front of my guitar and face and going for it. (There was a deadline after all). I posted a snapshot of the handwritten lyrics, which includes the whole first verse, some vague ideas for the second verse and the chords I used. The whole process took about 24 hours. It was a thrill. A great way to start 2021. The demo of the song is below, with the lyrics underneath.

Give a Penny, Take a Penny (Mom’s Bakery)

Verse 1: 

Give a penny, take a penny
the satisfaction of exact change
I work the register on Sundays
Every week since I was 15
My father found faith in the Bible
I’ve got this can of Skoal and my Mother’s wedding ring
We all have our tools for survival
We all have the hymns we sing

Verse 2:

She taught me how to knead the dough
How to balance the water, flour, & salt
She let me open the chocolate chips
and sneak a few without ever getting “caught”
As we’d watch the cookies rise
The magic mixture of love, time, and heat
You could see the pride in her eyes
You could see who she wanted me to be

Bridge: 

There was a quiver in the doctor’s voice
when he delivered the news
I was barely a teenage kid
I didn’t know how much I had to lose

Verse 3: 

I open Mom’s place on Mondays
The regulars smile when they stop in
They tell me they can see her in my eyes
I give off the same light that she gave them
with Springsteen on the radio
you don’t notice how the hours turn into years
In each recipe she left a piece of her soul
but not me, I just work here