Chat with Ron Dalton

(Reprint Victory Review)

Ron Dalton has also been playing area venues for a number of years. These days, he often performs with his wife Peggy Sullivan as Burgundy Pearl. After this mostly solo appearance at C & P Coffee Co., Ron wrote back answers to these questions:

[VR] What prompted you to begin writing songs?

[Ron Dalton] I've been around music my entire life. My Grandfather played clarinet and sax, my uncle played banjo, my mother played boogie-woogie piano starting at age 8, and they all performed at grange halls along the Olympic Peninsula way before I was born. As I was growing up my mother sang and played piano and encouraged me to appreciate all genres of music. All through my school years I sang and dabbled at piano and never presumed to be capable of such lofty expectations as to actually write a song.

At age 43, I guess I figured I might have something to say. I had picked up a guitar for the first time in my life and couldn't put it down. After letting music lie dormant for all those years, I found my voice and developed the art of wordsmithing. The music was right there in the wood and steel and the stories rouse from the emotional response of the music in my ear.

Nowadays I can't let a week go by without thinking about writing the next song. It now my companion and boon. For me most pleasure comes from re-editing words. Fine tuning the thoughts and finding the imagery in mere syllables and phrases.

[VR] Whose songwriting do you admire?

 

[Ron Dalton] There are so many influential writers over the years but here are a few notable ones:

• John Gorka - First of the singer-songwriter influences who got me thinking about complexity in folk music. (?!)
• Michael McNevin - Not the biggest name in folk music but definitely the one whose music touched me the most. A tell you a story with such charm and imagery that you feel you have been best buds for a lifetime. I like comfort songs.
• Randy Newman – Uses all the different methods to share thoughts and Ideas. Makes you happy, great irony, lovely melodies. He has a great sense of using chord and melody changes to tell another story on a different layer than the words ("Marie" being a great example).
• Sting - Sting has a flow of consciousness that rolls out of you mouth like chocolate.

[VR] Your songs often speak of pleasures in your life. Happy life, happy songs?

 

[Ron Dalton] I do like to share good thoughts with others. Don't kid yourself, I write my share of 'rip your heart out - life sucks' songs. I tend to balance them more. I'd rather leave 'em smiling. My life has been eventful, but not as trying as I've heard and seen in others.

 

[VR] You mentioned on stage that, as you write a song, you don't like to let either the chords or the words get too far ahead. What is it like to wrestle them together?

 

[Ron Dalton] It has become easier to do now that I have developed my own writing style that fits my time allowances. It seem the when ever I get a chance to just sit with my guitar without an agenda, something pops out that gets me exited. If I get inspired I will grab my little camera and make a video of the groove so I can see finger placement and rhythm. (Isn't technology grand?) This video is transferred to my computer and incubates until I have find the right story or idea that lifts the groove into a complete package.

 

[VR] You have a deft touch for a change in key in the bridge, that sounds like it owes a good bit to what used to be called "The Great American Songbook." So are you a "folksinger" writing "folk songs"?

 

[Ron Dalton] I have this aversion to being categorized as other than a "songwriter." This may not work well with the way music business operates these days. My songwriter influences vary, but I do enjoy the standards, swing, jazz, torch.

As a songwriter I write in whatever genre best opens the story to that audience. As a singer, I consider myself a baritone ballad singer with range.

 

[VR] You seem comfortable before an audience. Does that come naturally, or has that relationship grown with your playing?

 

[Ron Dalton] Definitely grown! Thank God for open mics. This really helped me get beyond my own stupid mistakes. It used to kill me whenever I messed up on stage. I would develop 'fat fingers' , the voice would not do what it was supposed to do. That did take time. I have been working on developing a better stage presence lately to share more of what made these songs sharable. I know I enjoy going to live performances where I learn more about the thoughts of the performer.

 

[VR] You also love to sing harmonies, especially with your partner Peggy. Talk a little about songs that invite harmonies, and songs that don't. Do they seem to differ in subject matter?

 

[Ron Dalton] I live for harmonies! I really enjoy singing backup with others as well as being backed up. Harmonies are a challenge in that to me it's more about blend then anything else. Blend only comes when you make an effort to match the other singer(s) and not think as much of what you can do vocally.

I am blessed to be able to sing with Peggy who gives the same attention to harmony that I do. We recognized this special blend at the beginning and it still thrills me when I hear her voice with mine.

As for writing songs for harmony, I have really only begun this over the last few years. Again, Peggy inspires this writing but the subject matter and types of harmony are not a consideration. I may have an idea for a harmony in mind when I write it but it never ceases to amaze me when Peggy creates a harmony. "Wake up and Smell the Coffee" was written for both of us to sing and her harmonies make this a pleasant experience for the listener. However, though "Cold As" was written for both our voices, Peggy's harmonies add a starkness that is emotionally stunning, and makes the song much more powerful than I ever imagined.

 

[VR] How do you feel about a song becoming the vehicle for a message? Do some of your songs want to convince the listener of something?

 

[Ron Dalton] Yes, many of my songs try to add insight to a thought or idea. I try to avoid throwing bricks at the audience but I'm a firm believer in the power of 'nerf ball' songs. A healthy dose of a sense of humor is often a good companion to the 'listen to me' type of song. I'm not above the sugar coating or the shroud of mystic. "Hell on Wheels" is a good example of humor, and mystic that talks about a deeper issue.

[VR] Thanks, Ron.

 

Set list for Ron Dalton

Here are the songs that Ron Dalton played on Sunday, Dec. 13th at the C & P Coffee Co.

1. "Yous In My Mind"

An easy-going strummed vamp with a sassy Mose Allison refrain:

I can't seem to stop using my mind.

2. "Time and Time Again"

In his introduction, Ron speaks of his love of traveling. The trip that produced this song took him off windy state route 101 onto 199 through the northern California coastal range to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Ron's steady picking with two fingers and a thumb complements his strong voice as he speaks of his awe. "It gives you pause," he explains, "and 'pause' means songwriting material."

3. "A Fine Wine"

Ron's wife Peggy is a wine maker and a partner in a wine shop, so they also love to travel through Sonoma County wine country. Another strummed up-tempo jazzy vamp full of major 7th chords takes us through a list of his favorite wines.

4. "Best Part of Waiting"

In his introduction to this one, Ron mentioned how Peggy has taught him the advantages of slowing down. A question for Peggy from the audience goes unreported, as promised. The chord changes are so well-constructed that Ron repeats them for his break. Like Joni Mitchell, he sometimes will speak a line -- "I love your hair" -- rather than sing it. His bridges change keys in interesting ways, as the b6-b7-8 change in this one illustrates.

5. "Big Box Machine"

This song is about the encroachment of big box stores on towns along the highway, the Walmarts and Targets and Best Buys that dominate the landscape of so many struggling communities.

Another mall breaking ground
bringing jobs to the town.
It's a living, and a dying routine.

Restless from too many hours on the road, they take care to buy wine from a local store.

6. "When The Morning Comes"

In his introduction, Ron comments that as he writes a song, the musical idea sometimes "waits for the words to catch up to it." He tries not to get too far along with one without the other. Again, Ron's two-finger-and-thumb picking follows the chord change through the emotions and sense of the lines. Multiple capos provide the sound of an open tuning.

7. "Hell on Wheels"

Like many teenaged boys, Ron liked to work on cars as a kid, replacing parts to eliminate whines, knocks, and pings, until his machine ran red hot. To a syncopated strummed vamp, we learn that a hub cap is still "rolling round the night stand" from those days.

8. "Diamond Dew"

This song has a fanciful premise, a wish for a magic substance that would extend our lives.

When the dew fades away, I'll remember you the same.

Ron's obbligato picking invites us to entertain this fantasy with him, and we go willingly.

9. "Migrant Mother"

Ron worked for many years as a photographer, and his heroes in the profession were Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Dorothea Lange. This song is about Lange's famous photograph of an itinerant Cherokee field hand named Florence Thompson, taken in 1936 for President Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration. Ron gets a sing-song rhythm by loading short parallel phrases with internal rhymes and a pause in the middle:

In a ramshackle shack
she stays by the road.

This bumpety rhythm helps us to focus on what is "etched on the face of the migrant mother."

10. "Cold As"

Again, this song features Ron's trademark parallel phrases with internal rhymes:

Frost on fingers, a chill that lingers...

For the last two songs, Peggy Sullivan joined Ron on harmony vocals. Ron writes (above) that:

Though "Cold As" was written for both our voices, Peggy's harmonies add a starkness that is emotionally stunning, and makes the song much more powerful than I ever imagined.

11. "Shores of Her Heart"

Ron and Peggy closed the night with a song familiar to those who have heard their lovely harmonies at local song circles:

I can't go back, 'cause now I see
these shores are callin' me.

Friends joined in from the audience, adding layers to the chords, and as Ron's voice slipped from song into speech once more on "I drop the skiff," we went sailing off with them.