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Many of my songs come to me, completely arranged and ready-made, in dreams. The swirl of images and impressions are hard to play back in conversation, but joined to melody, harmony and rhythm, it is easier. “Dumb Angel” is my articulation of a dream about growing up in Avis PA, a very small town surrounded by shadowy mountains and bucolic waterways. It was my goal to write a concise and cheery-sounding pop song for lyrics embedded with streams of implication. Much of the time I don’t know what my lyrics mean until later (sometimes years later).

As it turned out, the song was “code” for how I coped with being a child survivor of sexual molestation and witnessing the effects of alcoholism and bi-polarism in my late mother.

The dream starts in 1970, when I was age 12. I was visited by Lewis Carroll, Elvis Presley and Brian Wilson. This ensemble seems odd to me in my childhood context; I barely remember having any Carroll books around, and I didn’t seriously study Brian’s music until 1974 and Elvis until the 1990s. Somehow they ended up on my lyrical ride into Wonderland.

Carroll and Presley were waiting for me at (what is now an abandoned) church. Carroll had messages. Presley was just there to pray and was “crying in the chapel” just like in the song he sang. I felt sorry for him. This is conveyed in the chorus. The carpenter in Carroll’s WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER poem is transformed into the Carpenter from Nazareth who walked upon water.

The title, “Dumb Angel,” was intentionally “borrowed” from Brian Wilson. In 1966, it was his working title for the original “Smile sessions.” Brian, along with Van Dyke Parks, invented this angel character that could not speak (dumb), yet had messages to give to people (angels are God's messengers).

My arrangement of drums, percussion, keyboards, and saxophone deliberately echoed the “Smile period.” To get the verve I wanted on sax, I instructed the sax player, Vince Alire, to listen to a “Smile” bootleg recording of “You Are My Sunshine/Old Master Painter." My bass playing comps Brian’s bass method in that period, quoting “Good Vibrations” and other Beach Boys songs of the late 60s. In another twist, the drummer was named Brion S. Wilson. We recorded and mixed this track in one session in 1989. I added percussion and a vocal in 1993, and remixed it in 2008.

In verse one, Brian Wilson had the duty of chauffeuring me and my friends around town in a Lincoln Continental, a big car that us kids used to call “a boat.” I’ve been a fan of Brian Wilson for ages, but in the dream I knew I didn’t know him well enough to call him buddy. He was shaky and kept smoking. In real life, I met Brian Wilson at a Pennsylvania airport in 1981 (and he was a nervous wreck).

The second verse fast-forwards me to age 14 and starts with a lie: “Used to have a ball in Avis.” Perhaps only when I was with my friends. In reality, that was one of the darkest times of my life, even though I can count blessings, too. Songs like this let out steam and probably help me to face off old demons. In 1971, we moved out of Avis under a cloud. God only knows, but I was nostalgic for Avis because it was familiar havoc as opposed to new havoc. The escape hatch was ‘waxing nostalgic” i.e. recalling good times that either weren’t really there or came and went in a vapor. It marked the beginning of compulsive behavior in me, as in, using wrong acts or substances to numb out pain and not “feel” reality.

At the time, skinny dipping in Pine Creek was a trendy act of freedom and rebellion. We boys dared to go buff-swimming near a well-traveled bridge. The second line in verse 2 was going to be “skinny dipping in the creek,” but I changed it to “waxing nostalgic at 14” because it was a better reflection of how I evaded feeling my real feelings.

My friends, the Kanski boys, and I could sing like birds, but “the women saved us.” The lure of the opposite sex eventually brought us out of adolescent stupor.

This song reminds me of the danger, then and later, in being too introspective. “Basking in the music of the trees” describes the spell of self-absorption that stunts your heart and makes you only hear your own self-pitying voice.

When I play this song live, I often quote parts from “Good Vibrations,” which is what I needed when God's angel, dumb with few words, messengered this song to me in a dream.

lyrics

DUMB ANGEL Words & music by Johnny J Blair copyright 1990, 2007 Word2Soul Music BMI

Don't know you well enough to call you buddy
The kids laughed when I called your car 'a boat'
Thanks for the ride to the Bible study
Even though it looked like you needed a smoke

CHORUS: I saw Elvis crying in the chapel
The Dumb Angel writes his book
The Carpenter is waiting at the seaside

Used to have a ball in Avis
Waxing nostalgic at 14
Man can sing like birds but the women saved us
From basking in the music of the trees

credits

from SUNDAY MORNING: SONGS OF RECOVERY, STRENGTH, HOPE & HEALING VOLUME I (5 song EP), released January 1, 2017
Vince Alire: saxophone
JJB; bass, keyboards, percussion, all vocals
Brion S. Wilson: drums

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Johnny J Blair "Singer at Large" San Francisco, California

"Johnny is a virtuoso"--Brian Wilson
"Pop music with a conscience.”--Goldmine
“the Harry Houdini of rock and roll.”-- Spotlight. Listen to Johnny's fast-paced mix of old school soul, psychedelia, punk/new wave, & classic pop/rock. Singer-songwriter in his own right, he was also a sideman for Davy Jones and The Monkees + performed with David Cassidy, Al Stewart, Buddy & Julie Miller, & others. ... more

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