"Sorrow comes around again"

The first line in a song is the beginning of the story I’m about to tell - the“Call me Ishmael” (Moby Dick, Herman Melville) line, but in verse not prose. It should say enough to convince you to come along and not much more.

The first full line in my latest single, Hold On They Say, is:

“Sorrow comes around again, showing her face like a long-lost friend”

I wrote that first line in the basement of my house while playing the chords that eventually became the chorus on my electric guitar - a Gibson Les Paul Studio I picked up used from a terrific guy who owned a small, welcoming guitar shop in town - now closed, sadly. The Gibson has a lovely warm, low vibrato remarkably conducive to writing melancholic songs.

The words in that first line came easy because Sorrow certainly does come around again and again, and, over a lifetime, can fairly be described as a friend.