Songtown - Vol. 14 (Since She Started To Ride)

Artist: Jonathan Richman
Song: Since She Started To Ride
Album: Jonathan Goes Country
Year: 1990
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Hello Song Lovers!

I'm sorry I haven't written about songs recently. As I had previously explained, this feature was starting to make me hate songs. I'm still fully recovered and loving songs again, but I'm going to give it a go just because you deserve it.

Today, I'm going to listen to this Jonathan Richman song over and over until I've decided that I've typed enough.

Do you remember that scene in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure where Pee-Wee has to rescue all of those animals from the burning pet store? First off, do pet stores really sell monkeys? Second off, if you're like me, you've never commiserated more with a movie character than when Pee-Wee continually runs past the snakeaquarium every time he goes to grab another pet. He momentarily stops, sneers and then runs past. But you can tell that he's resigned to his fate that he's going to have to eventually save them too. So after Pee-Wee and the monkey bring every other creature out to the sidewalk, Pee-Wee heads back into the store to face off with destiny. [As an aside, is destiny, by definition, a positive thing? or am I correct in assuming that there can be nightmareish destinies, too?] Pee-Wee emerges from the store with snakes flowing from both hands and does a perfect cartoon-like twirly faint to the ground. Later, a fireman wakes him up and calls him a hero or something.

This is similar to my experience with Jonathan Richman. Except replace the "worst nightmare" tone with a bed-time fairytale type scenario. I didn't know much about him in 1997 or 1998 or some other year. All I know was how awesome the front cover of "Surrender To Jonathan" was.



Every time that I went to Best Buy, I'd browse through every rack in the CD section, I'd flip past this album and give a little smirk. I knew that I'd inevitably need to buy this album, but for now, I had other purchases to make. And so we did our dance for a few months, until finally it had reached the top of my purchase queue. And what a rewarding purchase it was. This one is Top Ten album in my life. Most fans tend to like the Modern Lovers stuff the most, but I don't understand how this couldn't not be anyone's favorite. Every time I listen to it, I do a little fainty twirl and fall prostrate to the ground.

So, the song that I picked to muse about today doesn't even come from "Surrender" so why am I going on so much about it? I don't know. That's the Origins part of the story.

I sat on this album for a few years and didn't explore much else. I bought a few albums, but I never really listened to them. In 2000, I found Gram Parsons and that's when my love affair with country music (aside from Wilco's A.M.) really went into full bloom. So, I did the country thing and a few years later, I decided that I needed to finish my Jonathan collection and I was thrilled to find that he had an album called "Jonathan Goes Country." Could there have been a better idea? Not to me.

[As an aside. I don't know the proper usage of quotes, underlines or italics anymore.]

"Since She Started To Ride" epitomizes Jonathan for me. It seems that Jonathan's character has lost his love to a horse. She'd just much rather be out on the farm "grooming and graining. " God, this is poetry. I've emboldened some real choice lines:

She's got a brown suntan starting just above her collar
Her lower arms they're brown, but the rest is kinda pale
She'd buy Betadine if she only had a dollar
And she'd live out in the pasture if she only had a tail.

And no I don't see her much since she started with horses
No I don't see her much since she started to ride.

Well her jeans they get like a wet saddle blanket
And her boots are like you'd figure
And her car is full of hay
Horses, humans if she had to rank it
You'd bet on they that canter
And them that need fly spray

And you see I don't see her much since she started with horses
No I don't see her much since she started to ride

Candle and fender, barrel and mane
Don't see her much since she started to train
Cannon bone, knee bone, forearm and arm
I don't see her much when she heads for the barn
And she's so satisfied when she's riding and training
She must just love that smell of the barn I would say
She's so satisfied when she's grooming and graining
And she's tired in the evening and she's gone in the day

And no I don't see her much since she started with horses
No I don't see her much since she started to ride.

What is a betadine? I think that was in a Blue Angels thing.

Also of note is how he leads the players into the Solo section..."Go boys...tell 'em all about it!"

Now, I'm not saying that he was the first to use some words of encouragement to push his band into a solo, but when I first Jonathan do this, I knew that I would have to do the same in nearly every song I'd write from there on out. "Michael Junior Gittings on the guitar!" That sort of thing.

Hey, look. It was great talking with you.