Russ Towne's A Grateful Man

This post is for those of you who enjoy experiencing the process I go through when attempting to develop a song lyric from one of my poems. You may recall reading the paragraph in an earlier post about the direction I’d planned to take as I attempted to turn my poem titled “The First” into a song:

“The First” It will be condensed into a first verse without mentioning our ages and probably without even using the word “kiss” (as it will be obvious to the listeners), then a second verse will discuss another first of the same couple (first baby?, first anniversary/house, etc.). I’ve got to come up with a chorus. The hook will probably stay “The First”.

So now that you have my original intent in mind:

MAJOR DETOUR! In my first draft of the lyric, I changed the primary angle from being “the first events in a couple’s life” to “taking the leap together” and changed the title of the lyric to “We Took The Leap Together”. For newer readers, I’ve also included at the end of this post the poem that was the genesis for this lyric.

“We Took The Leap Together”

“I like you” she whispered
That’s all the prompting I’d need
As we stood in the shade
Of a towering tree
We were kids and new at this
A little clumsy and shy
As we leaned toward each other
And quickly closed our eyes

Chorus
We Took The Leap Together
Always side by side
It wasn’t always pretty
But oh what a (wonderful/heckuva/helluva) ride!
(Or: But it’s been one (heckuva/helluva) ride!)

Verse 2
We didn’t fall in love
That’s not the leap we took
It was no fairy tale
From some children’s book
We grew to love each other more
With every moment and smile
‘Til we could no longer wait
To take (a/that long) walk down the aisle

Chorus
We Took The Leap Together
Always side by side
It wasn’t always pretty
But oh what a (wonderful/heckuva/helluva) ride!
(Or: But it’s been one (heckuva/helluva) ride!)

Verse 3
It took some getting used to
Becoming man and wife
And facing the challenges
That are always part of life
But we held on to each other
And talked of a baby or two
We’d always wanted a family
And the time was right we knew

Chorus
We Took The Leap Together
Always side by side
It wasn’t always pretty
But oh what a (wonderful/heckuva/helluva) ride!
(Or: But it’s been one (heckuva/helluva) ride!)

(IF we’re going to have a bridge,
here are some ideas:

Each leap we took was our first
And felt so good we made it last
I look forward to our future
If it’s anything like our past

Or

Each leap we took was our first
And felt so good we made it last
We hope our future is as full
As all the blessings of our past

Or, if not used elsewhere:

We knew no matter what
We’d be at each other’s side
Our life wasn’t always pretty
But it’s been a hell of a ride

–Russ Towne

Here is my original poem:

“The First”

She whispered, “I like you”
That’s all the prompting I’d need
As we stood in the shade
Of a towering tree

We were both new at this
And acted kind of shy
When we leaned toward each other
We quickly closed our eyes

Because on that bright sunny day
When we shared our first kiss
She was only five years old
And I was only six.
–Russ Towne