Invocation

Classical poets imagined a group of brilliant, albeit often fickle, immortal women who lived on a mountain near Olympus, Mt. Parnassus. These muses would - with the right prayers, sacrifices, lucrative contracts that promised full authorial rights and copyright protection - dictate to the petitioning poet some great work of art, say The Iliad or The 102 Best Dumb Trojan Jokes. My invocation attempts to solicit the renowned primitive Baptist muse, Maybell Higgenbottom.

Knowing that Maybell isn't likely to hear the prayers of a n'er do well like me, I call upon my friend, the good Reverend Demaster "Mack" Sarvine III, to make the petition. The sermon he delivers is based on a passage from Deuteronomy, which describes a "wilderness of fiery serpents and scorpions" that Moses has to lead his people through on the way to the Promised Land. I assume some got lost on the way. Moreover, I assume that Moses probably was thinking of the great Okeefenokee swamp near where I grew up. I say this because one of my aunts once told me that my people were the lost tribe of Israel, which explains our big noses. Who knows? I sure ain't one to let geography and religious belief get in the way of a story.

I do the hums, lamentations, tambourine, slide guitar, wood drum, banjolin and other junk you hear in the background. Sean adds the deep bowed, alligator bass. I use my Maybell pseudo-resonator in C tuning for the slide track. The preaching was done at Derryberry Audio, and the other stuff at Swallow Hill's Charles Sawtell studio.