We humans take things for granted.Simple things, like the ability to speak, and
to think in logical linear patterns, forming our words into sentences without
even being aware of it.Yesterday I was
walking from my sisters house to my house, approximately 100 paces.I noted my steps as I walked, being aware
that each one was a blessing.I imagined
how amazing it would be if I were paralyzed and could finally take just one of
those steps.I have friends without
legs, and friends with legs that don’t work, and I am aware of the amazing gift
of one single step.Same goes for
talking, and for thinking intelligently, and for writing simple sentences.Really, we should all be blown away by the
number of things that come so easily to us!
I decided long ago, in early elementary school, that I
wanted to be a wordsmith.Not a poet
laureate kind of wordsmith, one who has to uphold a reputation.This blog is pressure enough.And my ADD makes me a little spontaneous and
more of a creator than an editor, and my lack of desire to go back and edit
hampers my creativity, because I don’t let things spill out as messy as they
should. Nonetheless, I am a stringer of sentences, good or bad.
My husband redefined his use of the word sentence half a dozen years ago when he
was appointed by Governor Huntsman to serve as a state court judge.His sentences are far less creative than
mine.His are meticulously thought out,
the law studied and reviewed and applied, his reputation or emotional
vulnerability pushed aside as secondary to his understanding of the law.He is the most even tempered person I know,
and the most intelligent.Though there
are many who would disagree, considering the kind of sentences he has to make,
he is well suited for the bench.
The other day he had a fellow before him who was being
sentenced.Dave usually asks the guilty
if they have anything to say before he sentences them.Most often they make no comment.But this day the man said he would like to address
the court.It went something like this:
“Your Honor, I know I am guilty of this crime, and I deserve
some sort of punishment.But I want you
to know that I am committed to making serious changes in my life, and if you’ll
only give me another chance I will show you that I am sincere.Life hasn’t been really kind to me, and I’ve
been knocked down a lot, but it’s like my favorite singer Chris LeDoux says,
sometimes you just gotta get back on that pony and ride.”
The judge leaned forward from his seat on the bench.He smiled, nodded his head, and responded that
he knew that song well.“In fact,” he
said, “my wife wrote that song.”
I asked Dave if the reference to my song “Get Back On That
Pony” influenced his sentence.
Nope.
After the courtroom was empty the bailiff approached the judge and said, "Did your wife seriously write that song?"
I can hear the sudden crash of metal on metal; feel the seatbelt cinch tight at my hips as my flesh wrapped around the strap across my chest. Even after all these years such vivid memories play out in slow motion. I had been driving down Main Street, Farmington, when a car crossed into my lane, plowing into me head-on at the intersection at Shepard Lane. I had been listening to a newly written song, demoed in my basement studio, as I made my way to my monthly Utah Songwriters meeting. I remember undoing my seatbelt and leaning forward to turn off the stereo, when a knife-like stab went through my chest. Fearing a heart attack, I sat back in my seat, praying for direction. I pressed my fist to the horn, hoping someone would hear and come help, since I had seen, briefly, the occupants of the other car and I knew they were elderly. Within seconds an EMT was at my side, talking me out of panic, checking me for shock. They placed me on a board and took me by ambulance to the hospital, where a few hours later I was released with a broken collar bone, cracked rib, bruised sternum and knee, as well as torn ligaments in my hand and arm among other injuries. Nothing life threatening. Just painful. I was unable to lie down, the injuries to my chest intensifying under the weight of gravity, so for the next six weeks I sat in a chair while the miracle of healing spun through my flesh and bones. My mom was visiting my sisters in California, so Dave drove over to her place and lugged her big blue leather easy chair down her stairs, into the back of the van, then over to our house and up the stairs to our bedroom. I lived in that chair for all those weeks. I remember being frustrated that I HAD to sit for long periods of time, at a stage in my life when I had 4 young kids and lots to do, and yet I could not even play my guitar. The arm, hand and chest injuries kept me from that pleasure. So while I sat there I got to thinking. I got to thinking about driving again. The more I thought about it the more I worried. I’d close my eyes to rest and I could hear the thunderous crash repeat itself like the cymbal in a discordant symphony. As time passed and I became able to walk comfortably, then considered driving, the fear turned to panic. As I sat there I analyzed the emotion. The writer in me recognized it as a universal theme, so I started a lyric. I turned the car into a horse (you can do such things as a songwriter) and it started like this:
Seven years old on a grey palomino I sat up tall with my face to the wind….
I remembered my Uncle Archie and Uncle Jim’s horses, and our once-a-year leg straining, butt bruising romps on Blaze and the other ponies in the corral. I clamped my legs so tight around the horse’s middle it probably gave the beast a hernia. None of us wanted to get bucked off. But inevitably one of us did, and the uncles always did the same thing. First they laughed. They paused for a second till they were sure we saw them, then they made their way over to us lying there in the muck; picked us up and patted off our rumps, then put their big leather covered hands around our waists and hoisted us back on the beast. That became Verse I. Fortunately, I knew enough about what I didn’t know and I looked up Palomino. I needed a four syllable horse, and that was the only one I could think of. So when I looked it up in the dictionary it said: Palomino: a yellow horse. I changed the lyric, turning the pony from gray to gold. Good thing I looked, huh? If you’re going to fake that you know about horses, you should at least fake intelligently.
The chorus led to the hook (main theme of the song, power line and usually title) which was…you guessed it… “Get back on that pony and ride.”
Verse II brought new light to the chorus. Love. Love…the universal theme of 98% of the songs you hear every day. Love lets us down. Sometimes hard. Sometimes so hard we don’t want to try it again. That was Verse II.
Then back to the chorus.
I had gotten this far on the yellow legal pad on which I was writing the lyric, when I finally felt able to hold my guitar and start writing the music. I had the melody in my head, but the chords gave it life. I was sitting on my bed, my leg tucked under me and my arm propped on a pillow as I played, and I was feeling pretty good about the way it was all unfolding, when the phone rang. I answered it, recognizing immediately that the voice on the other end was that of my publisher, Dude McLean. We chatted a minute, reconnecting after months, and I asked if we had heard anything more from Linda Ronstadt’s record label. Linda’s sound engineer had told Dude months earlier that Linda had completed the recording of my song The Builder, and we were waiting for a release date.
“Bad news,” he said.
Turns out Linda had had a falling-out with her producer of many years, Peter Asher. They had parted ways. She also left Elektra Records, and with it the project she had recently completed. Elektra owned the rights to the recording, so when she left, the album was placed on some random shelf at Elektra records, unreleased and unheard. I faked that it was ok, that’s just how life goes. But after we hung up, I paused there on the side of my bed, trying to process what had just happened and how much hope I had placed on that one little event in my songwriting career. It would have been my first major cut, with a major artist on a major label. Everybody knew Linda Ronstadt. It would give me instant credibility. That little demon that hovers over my left shoulder whispered, “Ha Ha, told you so. You are just a simple housewife in small-town Utah and you will never make it as a songwriter. I told you to quit trying. See…you would not feel so bad about this if you hadn’t put so much hope on it to begin with. Quit now, and save yourself the shame and hurt in the future.” I heard this in my head, and I am sorry to say I believed it for a second. I sat there, my eyes blurred with emotion, and looked at that yellow legal pad on the bed in front of me. Then I saw the lyric:
“Stand up again, shake it off if you can, then get back on that pony and ride.”
That’s when I wrote the bridge:
“I’m not sayin’ forget what you lost I suppose there’s a purpose in pain But what we make of ourselves has a cost And it’s paid every time we take hold of the reigns”
Then VERSE III, a message to myself.
Merlyn and I recorded this song for the album, Out of the Blue. The whole album was a compilation of demos, songs to be pitched one day.
Months later I was frantically dressing for an afternoon PTA meeting. My sister Ann Marie was visiting. The phone rang, and I asked her to get it, please. She called up the stairs: “Can you take this call?” “Who is it?” “It’s Chris.” “Chris who?” “Chris LeDoux” “Chris WHO?!” “LeDoux.” “I’ll take it!” I took the phone and sure enough, it was Chris LeDoux, the cowboy rodeo champion singer and songwriter who was making quite a splash at Capitol Records in Nashville. He had just come off a long tour with Garth Brooks and was preparing to record a new album. “I was wondering,” he said softly, “ …I was wondering if you’d mind if I sang your song on my new album?” He went on to tell me how much he loved what it said, and how it was said, and that he had a yellow pony when he was small and his dad used to pick him up and put him back on when it bucked him off in the hills of Wyoming. (Good thing I made that pony gold!) He sang the song with much tenderness. He released it on his album Under This Old Hat and again in his retrospective Box Set. One evening we drove to Salt Lake City, my family and me, and we walked into the Delta center for a Chris LeDoux concert. It was a rockin’ show! Chris was a wild bareback cowboy sort of entertainer. But the lights went low at a certain point, and the pace slowed, and the melodic strains written on the side of my bed started up, echoing against the large cement walls of that auditorium. “This is my favorite song”, he said, “written by a woman from right here in Utah named Cori Connors.” My family and Merlyn cheered, and so did the rest of the audience, though I am not so naïve as to think they were cheering for something other than their home state. He began to sing. I watched a young couple sitting in front of us sink down into their seats, her head leaned over onto his shoulder. Then slowly, around the perimeter of the stage and up into the rafters of the Delta Center, I saw Bic lighters waving in the darkness to the beat of the song. That’s how you know you have really made it; when people wave their Bic lighters to your ballad! Though now days it would be the lights of their cell phones, or the Bic lighter app on our iPhones. What a great memory. Chris was always so gracious. A true gentleman and true to his word. Because of him I started my publishing company, Seven Roses Music. I’ll tell you the story about that name sometime. Right now it is nearly 3 am and this little song-story is WAY too long. But remembering it has been awfully sweet.
GET BACK ON THAT PONY Seven years old on a gold palomino I sat up tall with my face to the wind I’d seen them prance at the circus in Reno So I dug in my boot heels and pulled on the reigns
CHORUS: And Blaze, he took off a runnin’ He tossed me down on the side Then my uncle Jim picked me up once again Said, get back on that pony and ride Get back on that pony and ride
So lift up your head boy I know how you’re feeling You say you won’t ride with a chance you might lose You’ve fallen from love and your head is still reeling Your heart and your pride have been shaken and bruised
CHORUS II: Like Blaze, she took off a runnin’ Love tossed you down on the side But stand up again, shake it off if your can Then get back on that pony and ride Get back on that pony and ride
Bridge: I’m not saying forget what you lost I suppose there’s a purpose in pain But what we make of ourselves has a cost And it’s paid every time we take hold of the reigns
So dust off your blue jeans, get back in the saddle Freedom’s a chance to begin with an end Getting back up there is half of the battle And love, like a pony, should race with the wind
CHORUS III: Like Blaze, it takes off a runnin’ And it may toss you down on the side But stand up again, shake it off if you can Then get back on that pony and ride; Get back on that pony and ride; Get back on that pony and ride.
You can hear my version of Get back on that Pony by scrolling down to the blue music player with songs from Out of the Blue. Here's a YouTube version of Chris singing it (with someone's home made video pictures). Sadly, Chris LeDoux died a few years ago, from liver cancer. A loss to all of us.
