How I miss you, I can feel it in my molecules

More tablature. I’ve thought about this song a lot, and I really adore it. I want to take a second to share what I think is special about it along with the transcription.

Nothing else is quite like Richard Dawson. He has an amazing ability to take the mundane and make it captivating. My first experience listening to Dawson is the avant-garde folk concept album Peasant. The album narrates the toils, tribulations, and transitory triumphs of Anglo-Saxon tribals. Between this album and its parallel partner 2020, stories of mostly trivial details explore the human experience. Despite how everything has changed in the anthropocene, there are elements of humanity that haven’t changed at all. I enjoyed the continued exploration of this idea in the pair.

Throughout these albums and most of his later albums, Dawson is very rarely a self insert into the stories. Jogging on 2020 is the only example I can think of exploring his own life, feelings, and experiences. Earlier albums explore personal experiences with more frequency. I still enjoy them a lot, but a lot of those personal experiences are tied to British culture. I understand many of the references, but there isn’t the same level of personal resonation in the content for me.

Regardless, Wooden Bag has always stood out to me as exceptional in those earlier albums. It’s a wandering description of a wooden bag and its contents. I am probably missing some cultural context around some finer details like Ladbrokes pens, who would own them, and where you would find them, but the intent of the description is clear. The bag itself is lovingly described with vivid details. It was clearly well liked to be kept and well taken care of for so many years. At the same time, the contents are a slice of everyday life accumulated likely without any thought or intention over years of experiences. It’s a neutral wandering description of an object.

In contrast to this, every other chorus is an mournful emotional outburst, lamenting the connection to and the loss of a person who is in turn connected to the bag.

How I miss you, I can feel it in my molecules,
Ooooh Ooh Ooh Ohhh! I can’t throw this bag away,
Ooooh Ooh Ooh Ohhh! I can’t throw this bag away…

Referencing himself as a collection of molecules is interesting. It feels almost distancing, but at the same time the passion attached to it rejects that idea and insists the emotions attached to the bag itself are real as well. Or that’s how I want to feel it at least.

Transcription

I almost feel silly trying to transcribe a folk song like this one at this level of fidelity. The verses are almost repetitive, but the repetitions go through embellishments that compliment the adornments of the bag. The Open D tuning lends itself to imperfections that could change every live performance. Every open string note fits perfectly into the context around it.

The choruses get into ethereal triplet rhythms (I think, could just be multiple tempo changes, but it is an accurate interpretation that makes sense to me). This is paired with the explicit mentions of emotional connection, special occasions that the bag is linked with, and descriptions the most fiddly elements of the bag that make special care for the belonging evident. A more rock styled riff pairs with the brief emotional climaxes.

The last verse features the most embellishments as the song reaches its conclusion.

I learned how to play this song several years ago. I don’t think I had the skill to transcribe it then. Certainly not as a (mostly) 1 evening project. Picking it apart at this level of detail, I found all of the places my own variations on verse embellishments had diverged. Over time my own interpretation of the guitar parts overwrote the original memories of the song, becoming an amalgamation of my interpretation and the origial that is every bit as vivid and real in my mind when I think about it or if the song gets stuck in my head. It’s shocking but also completely unsurprising at the same time. I still might change my mind on how I chose to write some of these measures, but I’m happy with this draft regardless.

Feel free to save a copy. Let me know if you like it.

With love,