First Song

TitleFirst Song
ArtistAndrew Bird
AlbumWeather Systems
Release Date2003-04-01
DescriptionTrack #1 on Andrew Bird’s second solo album, Weather Systems, the first after his disbanding Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire.

This song is an almost word-for-word adaptation of a poem by the same name written by Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), a nationally recognized American poet laureate who wrote famous poems like “Blackberry Eating.”
LyricsThen it was dusk in Illinois a small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung hung
Hung on a rail fence, a sapped thing
So weary to crying

Dark was growing tall
He began to hear the pond frogs all calling on his ear
They were calling on his ear
They were calling on his ear with what seemed their joy

Soon the sound was pleasant for a boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and nightfall of Illinois
And from the fields two small boys came
Bearing cornstalk violins
So they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins
And the three just sat there scraping of the joy
Of their joy, they're scraping of the joy

It was now fine music, the frogs and the boys did
In the towering Illinois twilight
Make and into dark in spite of a shoulder's ache

A boys hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness and the song woke his heart
To the darkness and sadness of joy

Dark was growing tall
He began to hear the pond frogs all calling on his ear
They were calling on his ear
They were calling on his ear with what seemed their joyYou might also like