The Handling

The Handling
REBUILDING PERMIT - track 3
Album released April 2020.
Originally released 6 March 2020 as Big Stir Digital Single #63 on Big Stir Records.
More from REBUILDING PERMIT:
1. It's OK
2. If I Write It Down
3. The Handling
4. The Biscuit (Who Grabbed My Face)
5. Diet Of Worms
6. The President Of The United States Is The Breitbart Bimbo
7. Broken
8. A Good Road Is Hard To Find
9. (Who Am I) To Ask You To Dance?
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.