(THEME)
TR: ...and now Bob's Bank in the green mobile home brings you ---- The Singer-Songwriter Show -----. At Bob's Bank we've helped countless folks realize their dreams and purchase a late-model car, remodel a basement, or install an automatic garage-door opener. And now, let's introduce today's guests on The Singer-Songwriter Show, The Singing Slocum Family. Welcome. So tell us a little bit about how you got started singing, Ginny Slocum.
GW: Well, our story is not so different from the stories of a lot of folks. We grew up in northern Minnesota, Daddy was in the plywood business and Mama ran a luncheonette and my brothers Earl and Jimmy and I started singing together as a way to earn money to purchase drugs.
TR: I see. How old were you at this time?
GK: We were about thirteen.
TR: All of you were thirteen?
GK: No, that was the median age.
TR: I see. Why did you use drugs?
DR: Probably if you'd lived in northern Minnesota you would need to ask that question.
GK: It was cold and dark and bleak and we didn't have good coffee up there, we only had instant.
GW: You wake up on a morning in February and drink a cup of instant coffee and it makes a person ready for Percodan, believe me.
TR: What sort of songs did you sing?
GW: We sang old-time songs like Mama taught us except we couldn't remember the words very well because we were using drugs but we kept on singing the songs anyway but we made up new words--
(MUSIC)
GW & GK:
I asked my love to go with me
Just to walk a little way
And as we walked then may we talk
All about Thanksgiving Day.
TRIO:
And only say you'll bring the pies,
Pecan and pumpkin would be nice.
Like Momma made fore she lost her grip
Down on the banks of the Mississip.
GW & GK:
She held a knife against his throat:GK: Our songs were maybe a little too honest for people living around us there in the woods but we didn't care because we were using muscle relaxants, the type that veterinarians give to cattle, and we were drifting through life in a haze oftentimes not certain if it was Tuesday or Wednesday or if we were a trio or a quartet.
"No pies for you, that's all she wrote.
I'm sick of you and Thanksgiving Day
And I'm going to Vegas with a guy named Ray.
I'll only say one short goodbye,
I don't expect that I will cry.
Soon I'll be cruising Sunset Strip,
Not on the banks of the Mississip.
TR: This must've been kind of a hard time for you.
GW: No, not really. We didn't know any different. We didn't know it was possible to laugh and be happy.
DR: If there had been such a thing as lattes or mocha coffee with a triple shot, we never would've been in music at all, but all we had was instant.
GW: You ever drink coffee made from those freeze-dried crystals?
TR: Yeah.
GW: Did you like it?
TR: It wasn't bad.
GW: Tasted like runoff from a landfill to me.
TR: Well, I guess it affects different people different ways.
GW: I don't see how anybody could drink that stuff. It was like water they'd boiled the mailman's shoes in.
TR: Well, didn't your mom make coffee at the luncheonette?
GK: That was coffee that sat on the hotplate all day.
DR: You spilled that coffee on your pants, it ate right through them.
TR: So instant coffee was why you were on drugs?
GW: That and the fact that it was dark most of the time. And the starchy food.
TR: You don't care for starchy food?
GW: No.
GW & GK (DUET):
There's a dark and a stormy side of life
There's a bright and a sunny side too
And if I had a car I would drive
To California, that's what I would do.
TRIO:
Keep on the sunny side,
Always on the sunny side,
In San Francisco or L.A.
Sit out on the sand
With a latte in your hand
Not up north shoveling your driveway.
TR: So I guess you weren't happy where you were at the time ---- is that right?
GW: Life in northern Minnesota just wasn't working for us, just in terms of personal happiness, and then we sort of got a vision that things were about to change for the better ---- we went over to see our aunt, the one who has the hair salon in her basement, and her dog, the one who always came tearing out and trying to bite us in the ankles and once he got hold of my guitar and actually chewed one whole corner off it, he was lying in the shade on his back and we could tell right off that he was dead, and to us that was a sign that things were about to get better.
DR: This dog had been chasing us since we were kids and suddenly he was dead and it was possible for us to imagine life being different from what it always had been.
GW & GK:
Go tell Aunt Lulu
Go tell Aunt Lulu
Go tell Aunt Lulu
Her old brown dog is dead.
GW & GK:
The old brown dog named Rusty
The old brown dog named Rusty
The old brown dog named Rusty
Who used to bite our legs.
He died from chasing squirrels
He died from chasing squirrels
He died from chasing squirrels
He ate one and got sick.
It must've been a bad one
It must've been a bad one
It must've been a bad one
He just laid down and died.
I never liked him anyway
I never liked him anyway
I never liked him anyway
I'm glad that he is dead.
TR: So how did you come to leave home and go west, Ginny?
GW: The death of Rusty just settled it for us. We got into our old mini-van and headed for California, which was our dream, and we gave up music and we got good jobs in retail. And we got off drugs. We just didn't need em anymore once we were able to get decent coffee.
DR: You have a couple of triple-espressos and chase em with a giant latte and you don't need methamphetamines anymore.
GW: We gave away our musical instruments to the Salvation Army and we became store managers and married California people and now you couldn't even tell we were from Minnesota.
TR: Do you ever come back to visit?
GK: We come back in June sometimes, but we always make sure to bring coffee with us.
TR: And how about songwriting? You miss it?
DR: Not in the slightest.
GW: Songs are about suffering. When you get your life straightened out, there's no need to write songs. Anybody can tell you that.
(THEME)
TR: Well, that's all the time we have for today on The Singer Songwriter Show, brought to you by Bob's Bank. Save at the sign of the sock. Bob's Bank, in the little green mobile home,just down the street from the bus depot. Checks cashed, money wired. Open until midnight.
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