You Lie Like Sam Hyde

Robert James

The music was written in a hotel room in upstate New York. How rock and roll is that? I occasionally find myself very inclined to throw electric pianos at everything. This comes from such a phase. The part in question here was recorded using GarageBand for iPad. If you use GarageBand for iPad one of the first things you learn is that the velocity functions SUCK SUCK SUCK. Keyboards suffer from the affliction the most. I really should have re-recorded the electric piano part using a real keyboard and my Mac, but I just didn’t have the energy to try and figure out what I’d done on the iPad. I’m not a keyboard player. The struggle is too much to worry about.

The lyrics are my second use of a website that collects old folk stories, specifically stories from Massachusetts. This one is about a guy, Sam Hyde, who was notorious for telling unbelievable tall tales, and for drinking a lot of cider. It’s sort of a cute story.

Here’s the link:
http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2012/07/sam_hyde.html

You lie like Sam Hyde
one lie for each truth
he’ll not be denied
anything for his use

there is the meadow
there is the tree
there is the river
nothing else there to see

One glass of cider
shiny half crown
a lie in the truth
I’m the talk of the town

Give me the money
and a little bit more
I gave mostly truth
when I came to your door