Chords for Charlie: How I Learned To Play The Songs Of Peter Mulvey, Part One

So this tune, Charlie, began with a guitar part that David Goodrich brought in to me.
He said, hey, check this out. _ _ _
[Cm] _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [C] It's just cool, and the B section's cooler.
[Em] _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ B section [A] makes it because of that.
[G] Da da da da da da.
That's so cool.
And I thought, well, this is great.
And you [G#] know, as often in early stages of writing a song, I just took that,
played it a bunch, and then began to [F#] make grunting noises.
That's kind of [G] how I roll.
Mm mm mm mm.
[C] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [G] Mm mm mm mm.
[C] _ Mm [G] mm mm mm.
So [N] _ that phase usually lasts _ a few months.
And then luckily, my buddy Paul Seabar came over to my house.
Actually, this room right here.
And we sat at this table, and we _ _ batted stuff around.
I came up with, I have it here, Blue Clay Coffee Cup.
Tuesday morning, blue clay coffee cup.
Thank you, Peter Knight, for the Blue Clay Coffee Cup all those years ago.
_ And so we just went into this sort of stream of consciousness list [F#] of things
that are bound to make [E] us happy.
[A#] The great Charlie Hayden, his bass [N] playing, _ traveling, playing poker with friends,
making up nicknames for said friends, great Ivish authors.
And the choruses were more his lyrics, _ which would be sort of listening to me
say a paragraph in prose and distilling it down to these crazy little gems
of crunchy language like, _ _ _ draw me one more bucket of foam,
or shake this jangled [G] thicket of bones.
_ Really just good, chewy language.
_ [N] And so then we had a song, and I was making the record, the Kitchen Radio record.
So we went into the studio, and I [G] played that original guitar part. _
_ [Em] _ _ [E] And the great Lou Ulrich came up immediately.
He just [F#m] went, doo-doo-doo-doo, doo [F#]-doo-doo-doo, doo _ _ [A] _ [E] _ -doo-doo [B]-doo,
doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo [D]-doo-doo.
[N] We sort of defined a feel, and I think Mike Peel on drums,
who's played with Lou for a long, long time, worked off of that feel.
And he created this drum part that sounds simple, and is simple to an extent,
but it gets _ very subtly more complex as it goes along.
So it's a really interesting way to inject energy into a tune.
It doesn't speed up much, and it doesn't actually get much louder.
It just becomes very [E] subtly, almost unnoticeably groovier underneath.
[F#] Kind of a soca beat that he was playing.
And Goody took that really [D#] great _ [N] solo, which is very fluid.
And so we made the record.
Some of you probably heard that version of the tune.
I love that version of the tune, but then I would go play it at my solo shows.
Especially at my solo shows that came up wanting, [G] you know,
because of Tuesday morning, _ blue-clad coffee [Em] cup _ [C] window.
_ [A] What's the [G] rhythm that's a _ [Em] _ [C] Charlie?
_ _ [A] _ _
[G] _ And then especially the solo, I [F#] just kind of,
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ [B] _ I felt the need to be freed [N] from playing just those patterns,
and somehow deliver the kinetic energy that the four of us
who made it, five of us who played it on the record,
were able to sort of impart to [Gm] the material.
[G] And so as often is the case, to free myself up,
I decided to let the guitar do [D] more of the work.
_ So I found this [Gm] tuning which is _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
really only just [D] G's and D's.
_ [G] _ _
_ [D] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ So now, you know, I can play that _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Lou Ulrich part, _
but [Cm] kind of have the finger [A]-picking going [G] on.
And it [D] all, it's all still there.
[G] _ _
_ [Em] _ _ [G] _ _ _ [A] _ _
[G] _ _ That part feels a little freer, but I feel like I'm able to get
more [A] rhythm into it, more low end into it,
and more moving parts all sort of proceeding forward at once.
_ And so that's how I learned to play that tune live, and _ [F#] _ _ enjoy.