Solo and Vulnerable

Dylan Rooke "The Whale" live at HMBFC 2008 from DylanRooke on Vimeo.

My good friend Morgan just sent me this video from a few years back, i believe this was 2008? we'll say it is. this was the first show i played by myself, and I remember how incredibly vulnerable and alone i felt out there without big amps and other dudes jumping around to punk/ hardcore songs. no, it was a world new to me, and one I'm still getting used to. there's something so honest i find about folk music, just singing a song with nothing but a acoustic guitar, no mics, no power but your fingers pressed on steel and wood and your vocal chords belting out with whatever confidence it can muster. I've been writing some more solo stuff recently and I'm excited to get it recorded. I'm going to demo the songs on my Macbook real simple like, just in my room with GarageBand. I'll post something on here when i get it done. the song on the video is called "the Whale", one of my first. i wrote the music but stole the lyrics from a hymn in Moby-Dick. another good friend of mine, Steve, got the chorus lines tattooed on his inner arm, it's actually what inspired me to write the song. kind of funny cause usually it's the other way around, y'know; someone hears a song they like and get the lyrics tattooed.. i did the reverse.

"The ribs and terrors in the whale,
   Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,
   And left me deepening down to doom.

I saw the opening maw of hell,
   With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
   Oh, I was plunging to despair.

In black distress, I called my God,
   When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints—
   No more the whale did me confine.

With speed he flew to my relief,
   As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightening shone
   The face of my Deliverer God.

My song for ever shall record
   That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
   His all the mercy and the power." -Herman Melville in Moby-Dick