The Seventeenth Hotel: One Day
track three from a new album of songs
One Day
by Dan Trueman, track 3
from the album The Seventeenth Hotel, with
- Molly Trueman (voice)
- Jason Treuting (drums)
- Dan Trueman (bitKlavier, Hardanger d’Amore, voice, whistles)
- Recorded by Molly Trueman, Dan Trueman, and Matt Poirier
- Mixed by Matt Poirier and Dan Trueman, Mastered by Matt Poirier.
- Artwork by Judy Trueman
In Candacy Taylor’s terrific book The Overground Railroad—The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, she tells the story of Geneva “Ma” Haugabrooks, who ran a funeral home in Atlanta from 1929 until her death in 1977:
Marcus Wimby—Geneva was his grandfather’s aunt—runs the business today. “Ma” Haugabrooks knew everybody in town, he told me. She would sit on the porch and wave at people who passed by and tell them, “I’m gonna get you one day. I’m gonna get you one day.” (p243)
Hence the very simple lyrics for this song:
Like the other tracks on The Seventeenth Hotel, this one is based on one of the Machines for Listening, #7:
Machine #7 features a slightly wobbly 5-beat meter, and a high A that wobbles itself, under pressure from above and below from the “spring tuning” system used in bitKlavier. This is one of the most meditative of the machines, one I’ve gotten lost in many times. About two-thirds of the way through One Day, the drums descend an octave into a quiet, saturated groove, buried beneath the closing lines in Molly’s angelic voice.