Satori: When the Well Runs Dry

 

Most people who have listened to my music know me as Dewey Kincade or as a member of The Navigators.  While I was in Satori, I wrote several songs that I later released that were firmly in the singer-songwriter genre- "Christ, I've Done it Again", "Learn to Suffer" and "Lost and Found."  The entire album that I released last year, Victims of the Moon, was entirely composed while I was in Satori. Of course, at the time, Satori was my only outlet for my songwriting, with the exception of the occassional solo acoustic performance.  

I wrote "When the Well Runs Dry" when I was living in New York with my room-mates Nick and Tonya.  I was twenty years old, and I had moved to New York City, largely because I didn't want to go back to school, but also because I wanted to be near a woman I had fallen in love with (a theme that would happen again and again).  

I lived on 29th St. between 3rd and 2nd ave.  I was working at a place called New Dramatists, which was a playwrighting organization.  This was at a time when Times Square was still seedy.  I got to sit next to Edward Albee for a performance of The Marriage Play.  I got to meet Sigourney Weaver and Olympia Dukakis.  At one point, I found myself running sound for an off-off broadway production.  The sound cues were all on cassette.  Once a week I would take a figure-drawing class at Fordham University.  How I managed to pull all of this off, is a bit beyond me. 

Of course, the only thing that mattered to me was my girlfriend, who didn't seem to feel that strongly about our relationship.  So I wrote "When the Well Runs Dry."  It's a pretty conventional song, and the choral refrain has been used for generations, and I think there are at least a half a dozen songs with the same title.  This seemed like an unlikely candidate for a Satori song.

I moved back to Louisville in the New Year, and I set up shop in Old Louisville.  I worked at the Kentucky Center and took some classes at U of L.  I had a lot of music in me, and not a lot of outlets, but Danny Flanigan had an open mic every Monday, I think at (then) Anthony's by the Bridge. My girlfriend and brother would also frequent, and it was a nice weekly place to showcase music.  I met a lot of song writers there like Dan Killian, Butch Rice, and Kelly Wilkinson. I began to see that there was a lot of talent in Louisville, and I wasn't in such a hurry to get back to New York. 

So I began playing "When the Well Runs Dry" and I got a lot of positive feedback.  A lot of people I respected seemed to dig the song, so I began to think that I had to make it part of my band, but it really didn't fit into our sound.  Still we worked it up, and I was surprised that the band was amenable to it as they were.  We would go into the studio just a few months later, so the song was only few months old when we recorded it with Andrew Lee and Brian Gager.  The song was so new as an arrangement, I didn't really hear what we had until I was listening back to the recording. I really loved Matt's guitar part.  

For me, the song makes me think of a brick wall, because the apartment I lived in in New York had an exposed brick wall, and I remember playing it at an open mic night in Louisville at the Rudyard Kipling- which was right by my apartment in Old Louisville.  

Unfortunately, I don't think I did the song justice when we initially recorded it.  I had come down with the flu, and being able to sing was a real challenge.  For the longest time, the strain in my voice bugged me, but listening back, I actually like it.  It gives the song emotional depth.