Timothy Zieger

"A singer-songwriter of uncommon depth."

singer/songwriter

Finding What’s Enough

Some songs are prompted by a phrase you think or hear, or a chord progression you like, or fully formed statements you want to craft into lyrics. Other songs are puzzles–narratives you want to piece together, loosely connected observations you’re convinced fit together, or points you want to work your way towards. This song was a gesture, a spontaneous movement of the mind, saying something I needed to hear.

It didn’t take much time. It started with a satisfied sigh–the first I’d expressed in ages–and ended in quiet gratitude. 

Finding What's Enough

Your hands warm in your pockets—
A nickel and a dime
Left over from a conversation 
With a friend wrought out of time.
  
The trees stain the sidewalk 
As their leaves give up the ghost
In an afternoon spent lost
Finding the long way home.
 
There might be a message
Under every stone,
And if you leave it for your children
They’ll never be alone.
 
'Cause the story in the soil
And the story in the bone
Are woven by the sinew
Of the will to grow.
 
So, if you hold your lover
Later on tonight
Don’t be afraid to give her all that
You’ve ever held inside.
 
That small act of courage
In the arms of one you love
May be all there is to
Finding what’s enough. 

Yielding is timeless. Every other song on this EP drew from a definable historical element. This one came from the stones–the things we don’t have to know or control, things we are better for leaving–and accepting–as they are.

Zach was the friend in this song with whom I had a long conversation, catching up on a decade of life in a few hours. I wrote this song after a meal at a diner. I pulled it out shortly before a gig we had, and I knew when he added the keys it was done.

After I write a song it doesn’t take me too long to get to the point where I can barely stand to hear it again. That hasn’t happened yet with this one. I think it’s the beautiful piano part at the end. Take a listen to Zach’s playing on this one–isn’t that enough?

Landlocked

This section of Tanners 1836 State Map of Ohio shows the town of Leesburg near the northern border of Highland county (yellow).

Leesburg, OH. I’ve been there in my mind only. The Buckeye State claims a host of landlocked towns which would have been home to plenty of young, overtired pioneering farmers in the 1830’s. And with the mighty Lake Erie along its northern edge, it serves as a plausible backdrop for the narrative of this song.

Aesculus Glabra, the Ohio Buckeye tree

…I’d been landlocked since birth, all my days–a young Buckeye tree rooted in place.

Aside from being very close to the historically significant Gist Settlement, Leesburg offers little to history. A young farmer there in an 1830’s spring would have been engrossed in the unending demands of working the land. That was the endless toil of life, handmade and homegrown.

Lee’s Creek is the nearest body of water. It’s small–a forgettable, winding trickle that quietly joins up with Rattlesnake creek and after a full 50 miles gives up in the nearest river, the Scioto, a rambling tributary of the Mississippi.

“Lee’s lonely creek”

What might it have been like to encounter the sea for the first time if this was all the world you knew? That was the seed for “Landlocked.”

For the speaker in this song, the “rare lady” from the “great northern lake” brings with her the allure of a bigger world. A world of freedom and happiness, like the mythical holy grail.

Though we never hear her speak in this song, the lady from the north captures our speaker’s mind and heart. The power and promise of the sea calls to him in, and through, her.

It’s a call that cannot ultimately be silenced, and in time it compels him to give it everything.

What is your sea? I think, what is worth the sacrifice? 

Landlocked

She walked down through Leesburg
on an east wind in spring.
I had mud on my shoes,
I had mud on my knees,
As I stood in the low field
and watched her aghast.
I thought, what kind of lady
in April would pass all alone?
                     
All nature needs tending
and there’s no time to roam
With a garden for mending
and children at home.
Yet I soon found she’d come
from the great northern lake.
She was a rare kind lady
who had sailed many days on her own.
 
Now, I’d heard of the Erie, and I’d heard of the sea,
But I’d never seen more than Lee’s lonely creek.
I’d been landlocked since birth—all my days:
A young buckeye tree rooted in place.
 
Love grows like a violet,
 creeping and frail.
Its blooms appear early,
when summer is pale—
Like a leaf under leaves
 that’s starved for the light—
Like I was when I heard
 the tale of her life on the sea.
 
I followed her north
before the grain reached my knees.
My land and my home
 were just an anchor to me
While she drew me on
like the wind to my sail.
Forward the world shone
 just like the grail on the waves.
 
Now, I’d heard of the Erie, and I’d heard of the sea,
But, I’d never seen more than Lee’s lonely creek.
I’d been landlocked since birth—all my days:
A young buckeye tree rooted in place.  
 
--INSTRUMENTAL INTERLUDE—
               
I still hear her voice in the foam and the spray.
I still see her face like I saw it that day—
Just under the water, while the storm in my head  
Rages on with no mercy
Drowning out all the words she had said.
 
And I can’t explain why the waves left me here,
But I’ve given my all to their service and fear.
If one day they take me like the woman I loved,
I’ll sail with her there on the wide-open ocean above.

Musically I tried to emphasize something of the nautical theme of the lyrics without writing a sea-shanty. I had originally envisioned strings–as in a quartet–for the instrumental “bridge” section. As I imagine it, this is the moment in the narrative where we encounter the sea for the first time.

We decided to go a different direction in the studio. Zach Sprowls, Clyde Rosencrance, and I overdubbed a bunch of vocal parts. Clyde broke out his Leslie speaker and sponge-bass, and before we knew it we were in Beach Boys territory. Zach on the Magnus Chord Organ completed the sound…

I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening!

Up in a Balloon

In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers made the first public demonstration of manned balloon flight. The dawn of mankind in the sky had arrived, and news spread quickly. Goethe was 34 years old when this happened–the same age as I am today. He, like much of the world, was taken up in the unprecedented excitement of this new age, and he wrote a reflection on it which is now preserved in his Maxims and Reflections (no. 402).

I have been fascinated by what this may have felt like to an observer–or balloon pilot–of the time. To have seen the world from the sky–“as the bird sees it”–must have been utterly captivating.

This fascination seems like other experiences which command us for a time but cannot last–things which are to us like oxygen to flame. We consume them, and, in so doing, destroy them. But they become part us for a time, and change us forever.

Though we grow just as Goethe and his world did, and though we’re left struggling to recall just what we felt, we are none the worse for it in the end. We yearn, maybe, but we have been nourished nonetheless.

What was it like to feel love for the first time? Or hope, maybe? Can you recall–feel, describe–meeting your firstborn child? Your truest love? The divine?

In the second track on Now to Recall, “Up in a Balloon,” I tried to convey that universal feeling Goethe expressed:

“Anyone who has witnessed the discovery of air balloons will testify to the world-wide movement this brought about, what concern surrounded the navigators, what longing surged up in so many thousands of hearts to take part in such sky wanderings, long ago posited, prophesied, always believed in, always unbelievable; how fresh and circumstantial were the newspaper accounts of each single successful attempt, how there were special supplements and illustrated broadsheets, what tender concern there was for unfortunate victims of such attempts. It isn’t possible to reconstruct this even in one’s memory, just as one cannot recall the full vividness of our interest in a highly significant war which broke out thirty years ago.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 
Up in a Balloon

It’s hard to now recall
How, in a balloon,
We were lifted, all,  
As up in a balloon.

 Hedged in by concern
On all sides,
While longing in the hearts
Of thousands did rise,
Just to feel a part
Of wandering the sky—
Long ago believed
And prophesied—
So hard to believe,
Yet so hard to deny.

It’s not possible
To build it up again—
Even in my mind—
That feeling I would get
When I was looking up.
When we were looking up…  
 
--INSTRUMENTAL INTERLUDE--

It’s hard to now recall
How, in a balloon,
We were lifted, all, 
As up in a balloon.

I’d like to think that though this song is historically specific, it is metaphorically universal. I know what it’s like, for instance, to be unable to recreate or express the feeling of falling in love with my wife, or meeting my firstborn son. I hope that someday I might be able to experience those depths again, but if I never do, I still know I have been forever changed by them–for the better.

If you’d like to hear the song please subscribe to my email list, or contact me directly, or follow me on Spotify. That’s the way we connect these days. And if you want something physical, I’ll have CD’s to send your way, too. You may have to break out the old Discman you used to love…