Thursday September 17, 2020 “Smoke from a Distant Fire” Sanford Townsend Band
A really cool song whose title seems unfortunately appropriate right now.
My local weatherman here in NY tells me that we would have beautiful blue skies today except for what appears to be a cloud cover but is actually smoke that has traveled from those horrendous fires on the west coast, smoke from a distant fire.
You might think that this poppy tune was based on a romance broken by betrayal but you would be wrong as it started as a challenge.
John Townsend shared a duplex with classical guitarist Steve Stewart who Townsend said practiced relentlessly twenty four hours a day. One morning John’s friend and musician Ed Sanford came over and witnessed Townsend railing at his classical guitarist roommate telling him to do something that will actually make him money.
Challenged, Stewart ripped out a melody which Sanford really liked and he dropped some initially random lyrics on the melody and “Smoke from a Distant Fire” was born.
It would become a top ten song but would unfortunately be the only charting tune from a band that Jerry Masters, the recording engineer who worked on the album that contained this single, called the best band he had ever worked with in his 50 year career.
Stay safe and well...let’s hope they are able to get those distant fires under control.
