NOTES

For a song this simple, I worked on writing it seemingly forever -- about two years, sporadically every few months.  I had the gist of the verses and main riff the whole time, but I just could not settle down with the lyric, or find an appropriate B section to make it a whole song.  I kept being unsure that it could possibly be as simple as it was. As a wise-ass wise man once said, "the waiting is the hardest part..."  Complicating matters was that it was a song in part about my struggles both with my father's decline (from Parkinson's & Lewy Body Dementia) and with my drinking -- being written *while* said struggles were still very much alive and kicking me in the face. I'd come back to the lyric after a few weeks away and have to rewrite it because my position on the matters at hand had shifted, or the facts had changed.  The song relented once I got sober January 2, 2018 -- shortly thereafter, the working album title REBUILDING PERMIT came to me, which in turn gave me the song's bridge.  Thankfully, when my Dad flew away the following October, the oldest and largest-looming of the "old cats" I'd had to bid farewell that year, I had "The Handling" ready to help hold myself together.

 

CREDITS

Produced by Dolph Chaney.

Co-produced & mixed by Milk Arnold.

Jim LeFager: Drums.

Dolph Chaney: Electric guitars, bass, voice.

 

LYRICS

 

I can't handle bars, 

dives, or hillbilly clubs 

I can't handle the handrails 

being taken by handlers in scrubs 

 

So I'm shipping out 

and the handling 

is evening out 

This evening 

The handling is evening out 

 

I can't handle my Dad 

I can't handle his death 

I can't handle my old cat 

running out of such terrible breath 

 

So I'm shipping out 

and the handling 

is evening out 

This evening 

The handling is evening out 

 

The flooding filling tears 

I'm choking back from you 

It's a rebuilding year 

but the permit just came through 

 

I can't handle the truth 

I can't handle the myth 

I can't handle a handle 

So somebody's gotta take the fifth 

 

And I'm shipping out 

and the handling 

is evening out 

This evening 

The handling is evening out 

 

written by Dolph Chaney 2017-2018 
©2018 Dolph Chaney (BMI). All rights reserved.