Paging Audrey (Demo)

If you’re anything like us, you enjoy demos in part because they provide a glimpse of a now-familiar song “in the wild”: hair mussed, buttons missing, mismatched socks. Just the bones the creature will need. The hair, the socks don’t count at all; presentational concerns are still miles away.

So what’s a song minus the presentational concerns? Typically, they’ll be called demos. If the writer has written a successful demo for a particular song — knows what must be included, and knows what must be cut, some writers — Walter among them — believe that they’ve acquired both a map to ad guardian for the soul of their song,

Walter spoke many times in interviews about both the found and the lost of life with your song. You find your song when you decide that *this* demo, as you've crafted it, has the essentials you need to always recognize if you are to remember its soul, and what of yours you gave it. Walter once described good demo like a fire pot. It will carry what’s alive and crucial in your song wherever you may need to go.

Unfortunately, he also said, it’s all to easy — frighteningly easy — to leave the fire pot behind, or let it’s heat go out; to cover up the essence of your song with things — instruments; arrangements; obsessions over bob essentials, infatuations with process and tools, too much self-consciousness about your own performances — until soon you can’t remember why you even wrote this song in the first place. And unless you scrape all the obscuring stuff off, toss it out and go back to I, finishing this song will become nothing but a soulless slog.

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The 4 note refrain of “Paging Audrey…” had been around for at least 10 years. During that time, several women, most pets, one car, and even pasta, for a while, were paged. Ha ha, then, woah! one day, there was a song….with a tale more personal and absorbent of sorrow than i’ve ever seen him tell.

I find Walter’s singing here to be frankly devastating; so open, no ego, utterly unconcerned with public presentation, but palpably attuned to the emotion —the demo’s and his own —as it moved and rolled in every moment, I almost feel I’m eavesdropping into a very private moment; the first communion, at last, between a soulful singer and the essential soul of his partner, the song.

PAGING AUDREY

Walter Becker / Larry Klein

© Zeon Music

© Strange Cargo/Downtown Music 2008

In the littlest hours ‘tween the dusk and dawn

While the nightlight glows with the music on

You could climb so high in the dreamtime sky

And go anywhere

In that sometime place ever lost somehow

In the here and gone or the there and now

Did it all go bust — crumble down in dust

Or just slip away

Paging Audrey

Any random star

Lost and lonely

Somewhere very far

Paging Audrey

Come in from the cold

In that far-off room drenched in desert sun

Evil words were spoke — dirty deeds were done

Could we sail back there snatch them from the air

I dare anyone

Can we stand right here, call them back and say

Those were never meant to be heard that way

Let the heavens crack — let the day go black

I’d give anything

Paging Audrey

Somewhere very near

Safe and silent

There you are my dear

Paging Audrey

Anybody home

In a distant room certain things were said

As the loved one lies on the love-torn bed

And the night rolls on and by light of dawn

You’re not anywhere

Paging Audrey

This is who we are

Do remember

On any random star

Paging Audrey

Come in strong and pure