For starters, I want to apologize to my amazing offspring, Quinn, who is non-binary. When I wrote the original song a decade ago, I thought of them as my daughter. Gender remains in the song purely for matters of euphony. When I say, "She couldn't stay with me," I mean that they grew up; I'm not making a statement about gender. When Quinn was little we used to have "naked hall races," which might sound weird to non-parents. The "oh no no" lyric at the end is from the original song. I'm going to put a "favorite" tag on this for lots of reasons, though every time I've done that in the past, nagging shame led me to remove it. Truth be told, though, I think all my "songs" are great, however naive and badly played they might be. I think it starts to cook toward the end. Go, Danny, Go!
About ten years ago
I wrote a song called Don’t Walk Away (Quinny)
In which I said:
“You can hold a plaster hand but not a girl”
And now I think I can understand those words in a much more immediate sense
‘Cause I got the plaster hand
But I don’t have that girl
She couldn’t stay with me
Miss silly-questions
Miss scraped-up-knees
Miss nobody-likes-me-won’t-you-play-with-me
Miss daddy-please
Miss daddy-please
Miss daddy-please
You can’t stay with me
Well back when I wrote that song
I said, “You can hold a map, but not the world”
Well now I got Google Maps
But I can't hold the world
And I've got that plaster hand
But I can't hold that girl
I can't hold that girl
I can't hold that girl
Miss daddy-please
Miss daddy-please
Miss daddy-please
Miss daddy-please
Miss daddy-please
Oh no no
Don't you walk away
Nothing else is as important
As our wasted labors
And hallway races
In these long and trackless days
Don't walk away
Just walk away (miss daddy-please)
Don't walk away (miss daddy-please)
Just walk away
@w1n Mar 2022
This is so good, needed a day to process it, gave me goosebumps when I listened to it last night. The lyrics are so powerful and emotional, love the relaxed indie vibe in the arrangement. Production is also on spot.
@odilongreen Feb 2022
Lovely and touching and just so involving and gorgeous. I need to come up with some more superlatives to throw at this too, but I guess the best I can say is this really made me feel something, and in the end, that's everything.
@ttg105 Feb 2022
Really touching, with the parent/child theme really well handled. Musically, it's catchy as heck! The guitar sounds really liquidy and cool. Not maudlin!
@williamjames Feb 2022
Superb guitar hook. You really have that indie style vocal going. The lyrics are super emotional and hit really hard! Such a somber song about letting go.
@zecoop Feb 2022
Holy cow this is an absolute emotional powerhouse. What an amazing write and you carry it in song with grace just wonderfully. You love your kids. Period. And you obviously do. You play wonderfully and I love your voice every time I hear one of your songs. This really hit me as a parent.
@bethdesombre Feb 2022
Wow. This is gorgeous and heart-rending. I love the conjunctions between the "you can/but can't" and then moving forward to the current can/can't. And the mixed emotions of missing but needing to let go. This is so beautifully crafted and a glorious listening experience.
@jerrypettit Feb 2022
I like the "talking blues" treatment of the lyrics--which are terrific!
Yeah, it seems our "job" is done when they turn 14 or so...but then before you know it the grandkids come along. And THAT is a lot of fun!
Great song all around--really nice vocal!
@cowboydick Feb 2022
Not maudlin at all. Heartfelt and heartbreaking too. Lovely, from the yearning title to the last line.
@paulh1237 Feb 2022
Such an amazing concept, I'm feeling very emotionally fragile listening aha.
"You can hold a map but not the world" is a great line and the little details (wasted labors/hallway races) really do add to the huge amounts of charm this song has.
@coolparadiso Feb 2022
I was told once if you don't like them no one will! We always wonder what we could have should have done as well. This is so deep and emotional. Thank you for sharing !
@jonmeta Feb 2022
Finally dipping into the Danny pool and this made me cry. Lucky for me that every one else in this thread is crying too. You’ve captured something powerful in the plaster hand, the representation of life that isn’t life, and in the childish phrases that disappear when the child disappears, but haunt the memory. What this has above all is tenderness. You say maudlin, I say tender. As always, the SOUND of your recordings is amazing.
@wolfkier Feb 2022
Brilliant, delightful, original. Well done.
Enjoyed much. :)
@blindkiwi Feb 2022
I occasionally have intense moments of emotional fragility wondering if I should have or could have done something differently as a parent and the answer is always, yes sure but look at them now, would you change that? and the answer to that is always no! Dont know why I wrote that but reading and listening to this song just brought on another one of those moments. Beautiful Danny!
@majormajormajormajor Feb 2022
I'm not crying, you're crying! I can relate to this so much. My kids are younger and still here half the time, but even years later to some extent there's a little part of me that mourns the end of those years when they're away and it's me and the dog. And you captured it beautifully. I agree- for reasons I can't quite explain,"our wasted labors and hallway races in these long and trackless days" is a kind of gut punch.
Also the refrain is fantastic. Having 'miss' drop ahead of the beat and dragging out the sss is very effective and gives the song a cool kind of swagger that balances beautifully with the sentimentality of the lyrics.
This one absolutely does deserve that heart :)
@billwhite51 Feb 2022
the lines are direct and at the same tie elusive... more like a pai ter's brush strokes than a poet's verse. we hear and think we understand but we do not, we can not. if that is danny and quinn in the picture, perhaps we can se deeper into the picture now. parenting is spooky. they refuse to tell us what they know. it is all a mystery.
@loveonamixtape Feb 2022
Love how you hold out the ssssss on "miss." Okay, and probably because I have a kid now and am drinking a beer, I started to tear up a little on the second listen (and obviously because this is very good.) The being in conversation with you past song framing works really well, highlighting the whole sense of time passing and these little people changing and coming into their own (*tries not to start tearing up again*) Great groove that does, indeed, start to cook toward the end! And this couplet is particularly fantastic: "As our wasted labors / And hallway races."
@lifewithtomcat Feb 2022
“long and trackless days” made me cry for reasons I don’t quite understand