GETTIN' By - Certified Naturally Grown Music by Judy Marti

I took off 10 years from performing to start an arts council in our community (Adams County Arts Council in Gettysburg, PA), to help build our farm business, and to co-author GETTIN' BY - Make Your Farm Dream Into Your Dream Farm. To learn more about our book see www.broadvalleyorchard.com and click on the GETTIN' BY - the book page.

NOW I am back. This recent CD, Certified Naturally Grown Music, is entirely my own original music based upon my life as a singer-songwriter-songcatcher-farmer. I have described each song below.

SONGS ON Certified Naturally Grown Music

1. Harvest Day is an a capella song that reflects the cycle of life, the planting to the harvest dance culture that a farmer lives by.

2. Second Sole is a variation on the cycle of life theme, reflected in the history of a pair of farm boots. Here the audience has a chance to walk through an orchardist’s four seasons.

3. 1000 Acres A Day was written for an Environmental Chautauqua held in Gettysburg in 2002. The title is a Federal Government statistic reflecting how much land is being developed each day, land that might better be used growing food rather than houses.

4. Little Brown Jug is a banjo tune I wrote about a story told to me by Ola Belle Reed. Her Uncle Dockery was a handsome man (born and lived in the mountains of North Carolina in the late 1880’s). He never married. She had asked him why, and he had told her that there was a woman once, who played banjo where he used to travel to play music with neighbors, and he had courted her. But he found out that she was seeing another man and so he decided that she wasn’t for him. The chorus to this song is the recipe for making moonshine. Tying the concept of moonshine to Uncle Dockery is my own contrivance.

5. Windborne is the name of a 40’ sloop that belonged to a friend in Maine. I wrote this song in 1989 after my first sailing experience on Windborne in the Gulf of Maine. I fancy this as a modern sailor ballad.

6. Spelling Lesson came to me after an acquaintance (physics prof. at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA) said that by looking at the timeline and the processes of life and evolution that have occurred, we can see that things, animals and plants do go extinct. And when you think about it, we don’t have any guarantee that we aren’t subject to the same rules. The chorus spells out EXTINCT, and that we need to be mindful of the evolutionary processes.

7. Stuck In a Country Song is a humorous poking of fun at the folk and country music categories. So much of songwriting crosses back and forth over the line that supposedly separates folk and country. I like both folk and country, and many songs in each category can be considered great and many are just fillers.

8. Back There Again is a folk blues song about going through the downside of a failed relationship.

9. Who Will Feed Me Now? was written for the 2002 Environmental Chautauqua. It was originally an a capella song with a sing-a-long chorus. I added a minor key banjo behind it. It is a statement of how people in America have gotten away from the understanding of how and where their food is grown. When people sing the chorus “who will feed me now?” I hope they are really asking themselves what they would do if the small farm passed away.

10. Hey Jackie! was written for my sister.

11. Love At First Bite is a humorous twist from a farmer’s point of view. After working several years at selling produce at a farmers’ market, this song just popped out. It has a number of excellent recipes in the text.

12. Getting’ By is the title song and is pretty self-explanatory. It is a true reflection on our lifestyle and beliefs.

13. This Good World was written when I was looking for a song that would be an encouraging sing-along statement of personal stewardship. It is a zipper song, that means that the word ‘it’ can be replaced by any word that reflects the topic you wish to emphasize. This song is a variation on the Gandhi quote: “We must be the change that we wish to see in the world.”

It is all up to you,

And it is all up to me.

We must live how we want this good world to be,

It is all up to you and me.

It can be changed to peace, respect, clean air, clean water, change, or any word/phrase that fits the cadence.

Thank you.

Judy Marti

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