It was a difficult game for me. Not so much the “playing” of it (I came in second); rather, simply selecting a song that described me was an effort akin to cleaning the Augean stables.

What the hell, man? What the hell?

This is not a song that I like. It’s a song that best describes who I am. That’s tough. It took me a whole day of combing my library to find the right track:

Mark Lanegan’s version of In the Pines (called “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”), off his 1990 album, The Winding Sheet.

Why?

Because this track, over many others, actually represents a great deal about who I am.

The first time I heard Lanegan’s version was 1991, I think. I was working as a disc jockey at a nightclub (I wasn’t quite old enough to drink but I was “cool” with some people and knew my shit and had filled in on emergency shifts so there we are). It was maybe an hour before we opened, the owner, Kerwood, threw The Winding Sheet on over the system while we set up.

The track came on and I was instantly able to sing along to it. I didn’t know how or why; I just knew the lyrics.

Almost.

(Kerwood is long gone now, overdosed on amphetamines, dead in a small West Virginia town. The man would wake at five in the afternoon, take a hit of LSD, do a couple of whippits, and then drink until he couldn’t feel the acid anymore.

And then he’d take more acid.)

(He once smoked me out and the joint was laced with PCP. That experience set me off pot for about a decade.)

Anyways.

In the Pines is a folk song from the Appalachians, where I was born and raised. I have fuzzy memories of people singing it around me. My grandmother? Possibly; she had a robin’s voice and there are many songs my three-year-old self learned while sitting on her lap.

(I learned it primarily as “In the mines, in the mines,” by the way, which makes more sense given the coal mining focus of my people.)

Lanegan’s version was a powerful retelling for me. It took the folk music I knew (and liked) and recast it, cloaking it with a chaotic distortion and anguish I’d never heard.

That mental shift has remained with me.

Do the lyrics reflect me? Not so much. It’s not the words. For me, the song represents my struggle to continually merge my history, lineage, and folklore into the modern, progressive mindset that dominates me.

When I am alone playing my guitar? My fingers fall into the patterns of Appalachian blues and folk. Take that, slow it down (or speed it up). Add in some echo, a lot of distortion, noise, fuzz – scream it, scream everything

birth to dying, all we are is trying

If you can understand that, then maybe I’ve succeeded in dumping my brain into notes and noise.

Nearly everyone playing the game guessed that song was mine, by the way.

An interesting bit of history about Lanegan’s version:

This track came a hair’s breadth away from subtracting both the Screaming Trees and Nirvana from history. Caput! Bands end, there is no Teen Spirit.

Mark Lanegan’s biggest fame comes from being the vocalist for a couple different bands: The Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age (with one of my favorite musicians, Josh Homme, the brilliance behind Kyuss), the Gutter Twins (with the other of my favorite musicians, Greg Dulli, from the Afghan Whigs).

The recording of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”, in 1989, was actually intended to be one of the first tracks on an album by a new band (for Lanegan and Mark Pickerel, the Trees’ drummer) called “Lithium.”

The bassist on that track (and for the band)? Kris Novoselic. The guitarist? A young upstart and major fan of Lanegan’s named Kurt Cobain (who was once turned down as bassist for the Melvins – a job that would go to Lori “Lorax” Black, daughter of Shirley Temple).

When Nirvana covered the track for their “Unplugged” session, they were actually covering Mark Lanegan’s version (which was based on a 78 RPM recording he had of Lead Belly). Lead Belly’s most common lyrics went “Black girl, black girl, where did you go…”

Years later, Dave Grohl (the only member of Nirvana not involved in the recording) would refer to The Winding Sheet as one of the best albums of all time and one of Nirvana’s biggest influences.

Yay, history.

Previously, Previously, and Previously

The lyrics to the song and the story it tells change a lot. In a 1970 dissertation, Judith McCulloh found 160 permutations of the song. Sometimes the girl is raped, sometimes, not. Sometimes the man is killed by a train. Sometimes not.

Anyways, certain bits kept sticking in my head, and I realized that, subconsciously or not, I had my own version of the story. So I wrote up some new lyrics for it that change its tone somewhat. The “narrator” is revealed unambiguously to be both the murderer and a ghost, forced now to eternally wander through the Pines (hell, maybe?), searching for his girl.

In the Pines

My girl, my girl, Don’t lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night?
In the pines, in the pines,
Where the sun never shines
I’ll shiver all the night through

Her father was a hard-workin’ man
Lived a mile and a half from here
Her head was found in a dried up well
But her body never was found

My girl, my girl, where did you go?
I hid from the wrath I sown
In the mines, in the mines,
Where the sun never shines
I shivered all the night through.

My breath was chill’d in the tunnel’s air
Murder – girl sixteen years old
The sheriff come; he shot me there
Left me dead in the coal dust and cold

My girl, my girl, where did you go?
I’m goin’ where the cold winds blow
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don’t ever shine
I’ll shiver all night through

My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night?
In the pines, in the pines,
Buried bones, bound with twine
I still wander, searching for you.

I had been playing it well enough on my own, and enjoyed it.

Tonight, Jeremy brought over a violin. That, combined with Maynard playing bass, made for an excellent test of my transcription.

We rocked the living fuck out of it. You might say to yourself, “Self, how can adding a violin be ‘rocking the living fuck’ out of something?”

The answer is that the song is not about “rocking”. It’s about experience. Lanegan’s version is angry; Cobain’s is almost psychotic. The way we were playing it was . . . sadder. I’m not pissed at my girl for sleeping out; I’m sad about it.

It was interesting how the violin worked. It was both “lead” and “not lead”. I don’t say it was “rhythm” because it can’t be – not with its treble – but it could drop to the background and let another instrument come forward.

We experimented a lot with the song itself and discovered that it had a lot of room for exposition in all areas. Between the more “obvious” verses, we could drop into long, winding jam sessions. As long as one of us kept the basic four or five notes in sequence, the others could walk all over town.

I’m really digging on the bowed instrument additions.

We’ll have to get some amplification on vocals for it. Though, to be honest, I’m actually not sure the way we played it requires vocals. Maybe only a single verse, spoken or sung cleanly in the right place.

I do know that my vocals sounded about four million times better when I sang from my heart rather than trying to mimic Leadbelly or Lanegan or Cobain. I am sadder than Lanegan or Cobain, with less baritone.

Totally happy about it.

This is based on Mark Lanegan’s version (called “Where Did You Sleep Did You Sleep Last Night”) from The Winding Sheet (recorded in 1989, 2 years before Smells Like Teen Spirit would make Cobain famous and 4 years before he would perform it for MTV).

Interestingly (to me, at any rate) Kurt Cobain performed guitar and secondary vocals on Lanegan’s version. When Nirvana performed it for Unplugged in New York, they were really covering Lanegan’s version and not Lead Belly’s version (which says “Black Girl, Black Girl, Don’t Lie to Me”).

Trivia Fun Fact: Cobain was a huge fan of the Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan, which is why he performed on The Winding Sheet.

Another Trivia Fun Fact: Cobain says that the song was written by Lead Belly, but it wasn’t; it’s an old traditional song from my homeland (the Appalachians). The lyrics change depending on who sings it.

Tuning: Drop D (DADGBe).

The basics are just laid out; as the song gains more energy, start playing the power chord version (e.g., DAD, instead of D). It’s the same for every verse.

* = let ring out

e--------------------------------------------------------------------------
B--------------------------------------------------------------------------
G--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D--3---0----0---7-----7-----5---0---3--------------------------------------
My girl, my girl, don't lie  to  me, 

e--------------------------------------------------------------------------
B--------------------------------------------------------------------------
G--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D---3----3---7----7---7----5-----3---0-------------------------------------
Tell  me where did you sleep last night

e--------------------------------------------------------------------------
B--------------------------------------------------------------------------
G--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D--3--3---0------0--0---7------7-----7---5---5--5--3-----------------------
In the pines, in the pines, Where the sun never shines
e--------------------------------------------------------------------------
B--------------------------------------------------------------------------
G--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A--------------------------------------------------------------------------
D---3---7---5---5-----3----2----0*----------------------------------------
I'd  shiver  all  the  night through

My Girl, My Girl, Don’t lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night?
In the pines, in the pines,
Where the sun never shines
I’d shiver all the night through

Her husband was a hard-workin’ man
Til a mile and a half from here
His head was found in a dried up well
And his body never was found

My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun never shines
I would shiver all night through

My girl, my girl, where will you go
I’m goin’ where the cold winds blow
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don’t ever shine
I would shiver all night through