1.The First Song I Wrote
The first song I wrote was about stealing a duck from the Public Gardens in Halifax for Christmas dinner. I can still play it, but wouldn’t. ‘Yodelady’, the first cut on my latest record Domestic Eccentric, is one of my oldest songs and the first songwriting eureka moment. I stayed home sick from work to write it in Dawson City, Yukon. I wrote it about the yodel that escaped from my sexual chakra when I fell in love in the same town a few years before. I’m still with the girl but we live in Nova Scotia now. I revisited it for this album because it hasn’t been on a record you could have until now, but is a popular tune at gigs.
2. The Last Song I Released
My latest song is called ‘The Early Days’ from the same record. I recorded it at home in a cabin in the woods behind my house that I built by hand. It’s about how fast the insane time when you have babies goes. It’s funny and sad. We had identical twin girls and a year and a half later another girl, so the last five years are a blur. The album is really about this special time and being someone who is forever coming and going. The song took longer than most to write but has a singable chorus and a lot of vignettes of the baby days.
3.Songwriting Secrets
I’m just always trying to write songs that haven’t been written yet and are unique in lyric. People are better and smarter than our songwriting culture would have us write to. My stuff is my own life made a little grander and more universal, though this makes me a weirdo and non-conformist somehow.
4. The Song That Makes Me Proud
My favourite song has almost the least lyrics. ‘Wait A While’ from Domestic Eccentric is not my biggest hit – I don’t have those particularly – but it does tap into the river of the music I love in a new way. I play it on a fretless gourd banjo and I loved the live recording of it with swampy African-sounding guitar and West African percussion when we made it in the snowy woods in Nova Scotia. It was a great groove to hang out in.
5. The Song That Changed My Life
‘Closing Time’ by Leonard Cohen has been a good friend for a long time. Since I was in high school. Great lyrics and melody. It is the kinda song that values intelligence but it also has dumb jokes in it. It is witty and sexy and spiritual and has the dangerous nightlife that attracted me to the music of the night in the first place.
Domestic Eccentric by Old Man Ludeke isout now through True North/Planet, and he appears at The Gaelic Club, Wednesday May 11. Head here for tix.
