I sometimes notice that people think we have a lot more time than we really do, getting a daily show on the air.
On Tuesday morning, around 10:15, I asked Chion Wolf if she felt like writing a song about bee truckers. We had been getting ready for a show that focused, in part, on the whole business of moving hundreds -- even thousands -- of hives around to pollinate crops, and I had discovered that hauling bees is even harder, sometimes, than other kinds of long-haul trucking. The hives generate heat, so sometimes the trucker doesn't dare stop at all during the day for fear of frying his load.
That seemed like a song. And Chion said yes. She keeps a guitar stashed on the premises. That meant I had to write the lyric.
There are several kinds of trucker songs. "Six Days on the Road" is probably the classic, and I started out thinking in terms of its amped-up pace. Then I started to think about the late great Lowell George, one of my muses."Willin' " is a slower thing, but closer to what I wanted.
So I wrote a lyric, and handed it to Chion around 11:00 am. As is often the case, I said not a word about how I thought it should sound. I think she spent a little more time than usual writing the melody and recording it. But, by that, I mean she hadthis by noon.
