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Written By: Jeff Oxenford (© 2006)

Performed By: Jeff Oxenford

Inspiration

I was driving home from hiking above timberline. It was a beautiful day that also inspired the song “Never Too Old to Play.” I was very relaxed and feeling great as I got into my car. This area has only one road, and on the way out I passed by a school. On both sides of the road, cars were lined up. I knew something was going on, when I saw all the media trucks jockeying for position in front of the school. I eventually found out that two hostages were being held in the local high school. I then rushed home to get my daughter home from school and the beautiful day in the mountains forgotten.

Process

In my lessons with Ben this week, I was assigned the task to do a song focusing on imagery. With the events of the day before fresh in my mind, I immediately came up with the line “in the shadow of the mountain.” A wrote a number of other lines down at stop lights on the ways home.  I put the song together the following day.  

In the first verse I was trying to portray the peacefulness of the mountains, followed by the tragedy in the second verse. For the bridge, I took the song in different direction, taking my stab at the media.

For the music, I was playing around with secondary dominance (the V of the chord they precede). In other words, in the key of G, instead of going to the V chord (D), I used the five of D (A7). When all was said an done the verses are in Em and the chorus in G. For the bridge, I quite simply remained on the Em chord.

The structure of the song is very basic,

V, C, V, C, B, C