The River

Charles John Quarto and I had written a few songs by the time we took on this song about the river. Many of the poetic phrases are from Charles' pen. We saw the song as an expression of the power and transcendence of nature. “I go reaching for the river, like it's reaching for the sea,” and “the wind may brush the water, but the river holds her sway.” Musically the challenge was to support that tone of reverie and spiritual contemplation. For the bridge we move up into the territory of the key based on the fourth scale degree as many choruses and bridges do. But rather than circle back to the original key, in my version we stay in that new key and sing the chorus again in the higher range. This is something that others have declined to attempt so that in the examples from The Kingston Trio and from Don Williams, the arrangers have found ways to bring the range under control. Some experiments don't always make it into other people's versions of the song, but thankfully haven't kept them from singing it. The music for this video is from our CD "Live In Concert" but I couldn't resist using the first eight bars of the Nashville recording from our "Ways of the World" CD. It just made such a nice intro. Learn more about our songs and our process at the website devoted to songwriter's issues at https://aboutthesong.com/ More about our music at http://www.compassrosemusic.com/