Started in on this one late on Saturday night. More just had the idea floatin around up in my head. The idea of being in the doghouse. Woke up Sunday morning with it fresh and at the tip of my tongue.

I didn’t quite have the chorus totally down, but I knew the idea. Went through about 7 or 8 different versions. Just wrote em all down rapid fire until something came out. Nothing did really, just yet.

The verses didn’t come either. Thought, at first I do some sort of rewrites of older lines, like:

Ain’t no farmer, ain’t no farmer’s son
but I could seed your field if you need it done

But that didn’t seem to go anyplace fast when I finally sat down to hash out the song. Plus I already sing those lines in the Barehand Jugband’s version of “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.”

Also had this line that I was considering using somehow:

If I bring the dough, baby can you roll it?

But, that didn’t fit the song either.

Turned out, I guess, to be less a turnaround blues type a song and more a straight up here’s what it is song. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, that’s how it went writing this one. I got half of it done, including the repeating chorus lines, Sunday afternoon, and the second half done Sunday night. You can tell from the recording that I been sick, and this one was extra hard on my throat to sing, not taking into account that I had to do it about 329 times to get all the words and guitar playing right and together.

Part of me thinks this new one’s a stupid song that I’ll never sing out. And another part of me really likes it. Especially the repeating lines. So we’ll see.

Two times I know I won’t be playin it are this week. Tomorrow night (3/29) at the Hideout with the jugband. It’s our regular, once a month, every last Tuesday gig. Starts at 9pm. It’s only 5 bucks. It’s a hot time.

And next is this coming Saturday night. I’m doing a 45 minute set at a soon-to-be-opened performance space in Logan Square called the Auxiliary. It’s a fundraising event for the space, and also apparently a pig roast. Check out the invite on facebook. It’s open to everyone and it’s BYOB. All you need to do is make a small donation at the door. I go on around 10pm.

Here’s something a little different than the other songs I’ve written lately. Not so much in the singing or playing, but the way I wrote the song and what goes into it and comes out of it.

Most of the tunes I’ve written the past month or two have been, maybe, what you’d call love songs, or Gospel tunes, or, at least, songs that are fairly personal, or could be seen that way.

This one, though, ain’t like that. I was having some trouble last night (and last week) coming up with a song to write. Mainly because I was getting tired of writing personal tunes. So I was flipping back through my notebook to see if anything caught my eye and I found a page I’d marked back on February 22. Here’s what I wrote:

I don’t wanna be in London town
or go over the deep blue sea
every gypsy camp has been burned out
by a 600 foot fire hose

and also this in a sort of random place:

just with you

I think I remember writing this in the car, driving into my day job early in the morning. Musta had some great, grand idea for a new song and then let it drop once I was stationary.

So, anyway, I found that and remembered I was thinking of writing a song just with images from all the old tunes that I sing around the house. Gypsies, calamities, two-timers, gamblers, jokers, cigarette smokers. All that stuff. So for this new song I used that as my baseline and went from there.

Can you tell what songs I pulled from? Here’s a minute to guess….

And here’s the answers:

The first verse contains images from Handsome Molly and Black Jack David. Those two songs I’ve been playing forever. Used to play em out a ton before I was writing for myself. The next verse is straight up based off the song I Buyed Me a Little Dog. It’s a weird one that Dave Van Ronk put on an album. A great little fantastical song.

The third verse’s images come from the tune Acres of Clams. I sing this one a lot. Usually A cappella. Never out at a show, though. This one’s just for me. Learned it off an old Ramblin’ Jack Elliott album.

And the last verse is kinda a combination of Woody Guthrie’s New York Town and the Carter Family’s The Cannonball. But it’s really fast and loose with those two songs so you gotta listen close.

Anyway, that’s where this tune came from.

Where’d the title come from, and how does it relate at all to the song? Well, I don’t know. It was just already written at the top of the page that I wrote this song on and I couldn’t think of another, better title, so I just went with Mismanaged.

Hope ya enjoy.