Woodcutter’s Children (1984)

Genre: Rock Ballad

In the 1960s/70s there was discourse about the supposed “generation gap” that divided hawks from doves, drinkers from pot smokers, the sexually promiscuous from the sexually repressed, those over 30 from those under.

All of it seemed like a rather simplistic reduction of what I knew to be a very complex (sometimes fraught) relationship between parents and their children—one that seemed universal and not necessarily tied to one particular era.

(I think the current supposed tension between Boomers and Millennials is also overblown, but I digress).

I wrote “Woodcutter’s Children” in 1984 as an obvious allusion to the Brothers Grimm and with that conversation in mind. What does it mean to be (metaphorically) children lost in the woods? How do parents sometimes (always) inadvertently (intentionally) hamper (nurture) their children.

I recorded the tune on a two-track cassette recorder, played it for family and friends and there it sat until now. I re-recorded and remixed it in 2022 with musical elements from the original tape.

It’s still one of my personal favorites. It’s always been in a hard key to sing and it requires more vocal range than I ever had, so the falsetto was not just an artistic choice, but a necessity.

Pairs well with Spotify, Apple Music Playlist “Roots and Branches”