Lackawanna Rail

WRITER'S NOTES:

Bob Franke gives songwriter's seminars.  I took one such seminar while attending the Philadelphia Folk Festival.  We listened to his discussion on the first day.  Then he gave each of us an assignment to write a song.  The next day, we had to play the song there on stage!  My assignment was to write about my son and his dog.

I labored over that song for the whole time that I had to work on it.  About the last hour before I had to go present the song, my friend Elaine reminded me of something that Bob had said.  He said to try turning things around and look at things from a different viewpoint.  So I could write the song from the viewpoint of the dog.

Things came quickly after that.  Scott and I sat in the camper while the others went festivaling to work on the song.  I convinced Scott that he should come up on stage with me to sing the woof's.  As we sat there waiting for our time to get up on stage, Scott leans over and says "Dad, my stomach feels funny."  HA!  I leaned over and said "Mine does too!"

Well, Bob seemed quite pleased with the song.  I was happy to see that someone appreciated my sense of humor and even liked what I did with music.  Scott was pleased also to have actually appeared on stage at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.  Being together on stage there was just a wonderful moment.  One of the other performing groups went up to Scott to congratulate him for his song.  That really thrilled him too.

I brushed up a word or two since then but for the most part, it's pretty much the way we did it at the festival.