A cinema, some years back.

Several years ago, maybe in 2008, Cass and I ventured to our local art-house cinema in regional North East Victoria, the Swanpool Cinema.

One of the films on the bill (always a double feature at the Swanpool) was I’m Your Man. It’s a concert /documentary about Leonard Cohen. Many artists performed versions of Cohen songs: Nick Cave, Martha Wainwright, Perla Batalla, Beth Orton, Julie Christensen, and more. The performances were filmed at the Sydney Opera House as part of the 2005 Sydney Festival show Came So Far For Beauty.

We were especially taken by a particular song not known to us, performed by an equally unfamiliar artist in Teddy Thompson.

Cass had introduced me to the songwriting of Leonard Cohen, I having mostly listened to the blues or alt type country sounds. I always warmed to a good songwriter and Leonard Cohen is a master: Anthem, Tower of Song, Everybody Knows, Bird On A Wire, for starters. Interestingly, some covers of his tunes often resonate more at first.

Cass asked me to learn Tonight Will Be Fine for her birthday. She had never requested me to learn a tune, before or since, so I did.

I worked up a version based on the Teddy Thompson cover, using my home-built resonator guitar. I used to play the song often when playing solo or duo gigs.

Lately I had forgotten about that song, along with many others. I haven’t played or sung for close to seven years since having a stroke in May 2018.

Listening to most music has been so much harder for me over this time and I have not been keen on revisiting older recordings and demos of ideas stashed away on various hard drives.

That reluctance has somewhat diminished of late. I am better able to listen to music nowadays, even to recordings of myself. I can glean if it’s bad or not and that’s a good ability to still have.

We recently watched on the television Tower of Song, a more recent tribute concert to Leonard Cohen. We got to talking about his songs.

I said, “Remember that one I used to play?”

Cass, much to my embarrassment, had to remind me of how I came to learn the tune.

Looking around on my music computer I found a simple version of Tonight Will Be Fine. I must have recorded it sometime back.

I didn’t cringe and put the file on the desktop. It was ready for Cass to then have a listen, her birthday a few days away.

Stereo Story 837

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Luke R Davies and the Recycled String Band won the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia Folk Recording Award 2013 for their album Not A Note Wasted. A Wangaratta musician, Luke joined The Stereo Stories Band after seeing them at the Newport Folk Festival in Melbourne in 2014..