What’s Your Job?

Song 283: Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week’s track is Gravedigger by my friend Richard Julian, who also wrote the song. He performed this track as part of a Fast Folk show at the Bottom Line in Manhattan in February of 1990, with Richard Meyer, Lisa Gutkin and Margo Hennebach adding the vocal backup, Mark Dann playing lead electric guitar, Jeff Hardy doing the stand up bass, Howie Wyeth handling the drums and Margo Hennebach playing the keyboard part as well as singing backup. I met Richard soon after arriving in NYC at the end of the summer of 1988, one night in a small folk club on MacDougal St. A few months later, when we’d gotten to know each other a bit better, he invited me to the songwriters gathering at Jack Hardy’s Houston St. apartment one Thursday night, and that became a regular weekly stop for me for the next few years, and also led to my involvement as a contributor to Fast Folk. During the 4 years that I made that regular Thursday evening stop, I heard Richard debut a number of excellent songs, but I always liked this one the best, and I first heard him play it not at Jack’s apartment but on the stage at that little MacDougal St. folk club where we’d met, one night a month or 2 before he invited me to Jack’s place. The words go by pretty quickly and you might have to play the video a few times to get some of them, but he packed a lot of understated humor in those lines, and if you appreciate that kind of lyric, then I think you’ll feel it was worth the effort when you get the full picture. If you’ve ever felt like a square peg being forced into a round hole, then quite likely you will understand the feeling that Richard is putting across here.