Throwback Thursday: One Too Many Mornings

"To love another human being is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The most refreshing aspect of Bootleg Series, Volume 9: The Witmark Demos was its reminder of the simple beauty of Dylan's early songwriting, unencumbered by layers of production. It brought me back to those early albums and made me appreciate again the rich wealth of material that preceded Highway 61 Revisited.

"One Too Many Mornings" was not part of this particular bootleg, but is of a similar species. Three verses, another lamentation.

When you look at the Dylan catalog the number of songs about relationships is a large one, perhaps in part because relationships play such a central role in our lives. Relationships are also one of the most challenging facets of our lives. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, which very few people plan for when proclaiming their vows.

Perhaps it's because there are so many situations that involve negotiations, as well as the difficulties of being objective in those many situations we're immersed in: money, family, time, expectations...

For this reason "One Too Many Mornings" touches a nerve. It's a song about movement... away from a painful present toward an uncertain future. Most people have experienced painful breakups even if not the married kind. Marriage only adds additional complications to the equation.

So the song begins with an evocative description of darkness setting in. Dogs are barking out there somewhere, but even that's going to fade. Nothing happening out there, but there's plenty happening inside his head.

Christopher Ricks, who devotes fifteen pages to this song in Dylan's Visions of Sin, points out that the song begins when it's not dark yet but getting there. Silence doesn't mean absence of sound, as Paul Simon pointed out. Words are formed even when no one listens or hears.

The second verse opens with the narrator gazing out toward a desolate street scene, but he doesn't see it so much as he is only looking in that direction. There's nothing really there, and when he turns to stare back into the room, there's emptiness here as well. So he turns again, looking back to the street, sidewalks, signs, a scene devoid of people, warmth or life.

John Hinchey feels the last two verses fail to live up to the first stanza, but I think it works because once you know the song you can't shake its melancholy effect. The second verse haunts, weighted with emptiness. The third verse plays out the root of it.

The couple had shared a space in time. Now that time was past. The narrator is alone, though it's possible his love is right there in the room when he looks back to the bed where they had lain. Except even if she is present, he is alone. Perhaps that is an even greater aloneness.

This is a very different story from "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" or "It Ain't Me, Babe." It's not all right.

To my surprise I'd already written about this song in 2012. Guess I'd forgotten that. Maybe I will write about it again sometime. Who knows? Tomorrow is such a long time...

Dylan performed the song 240 times in concert from 1966 to 2005.

One Too Many Mornings

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

Copyright © 1964, 1966 by Warner Bros. Inc.; 
renewed 1992, 1994 by Special Rider Music

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 2015

One Too Many Mornings and Other Local Dylan-Related Items of Note

When it comes to all things Dylan, there's always more going on than there's time to write about it. Here are a few items of note that relate to Dylan and Duluth, in no particular order of importance.

1. WWDD bracelets are now available here in all the usual spaces where Dylan souvenirs are sold. As you walk down Bob Dylan Way from the Depot to the Armory, it will remind you to ask yourself, "What Would Dylan Do?" Proceeds from the sale of WWDD bracelets will go toward events surrounding Duluth Dylan Fest.*

Gaelynn Lea (L) with Alan Sparhwak, The Murder of Crows

2. One of the highlights of last year's Duluth Dylan Fest for me personally was the celebration of Bob Dylan's birthday at his former home on the Central Hillside, followed later by the Duluth Does Dylan CD release party at The Rex. This is a truly great CD featuring local bands that do Dylan covers. When I wrote my review of the CD last June, I noted many stellar features of the various renditions of the selected songs. One of these songs was One Too Many Mornings, recorded and performed by The Murder of Crows (Alan Sparhawk and Gaelynn Lea.) At the time I was impressed by the wholly different variation or spin they put on the song, totally unlike the original. My admiration for Alan Sparhawk climbed another notch for his innovations (I assumed that Alan designed the chord structures and new design of the song.)

Then, this past week, a video of Dylan performing One Too Many Mornings live during the Rolling Thunder Revue came across my path. And guess what? It was Dylan himself who had produced the new chord structure, tempo and design of the song. I copied the link to the YouTube page where I discovered it but today find that it has since been removed. (It must have been a bootleg.)

Dylan's continuous variations and reconfigurations of his songs have long endeared him to his fans. Let me add kudos to Alan and Gaelynn for choosing this rendition sharing it on this CD. To hear Gaelynn Lea become Scarlet Rivera and Alan squeezing emotional juice into the lyrics is quite satisfying, and worthy of accolades.

3. An finally, hey man, it's that time of year again. As we slide toward the end of January we call to mind Buddy Holly's Dance Party Tour that passed this way in 1959. This Saturday everyone is invited to put their dancing shoes on and celebrate the Winter Dance Party with us, 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at the Sacred Heart Music Center. Proceeds go toward the Armory renovation and restoration project that has been ongoing for many years, with some noteworthy progress being made this past year. Will we see you there?

*EdNote: I just made all that up. But while we're talking about Duluth Dylan Fest,  the dates and tentative schedule for the Seventh Annual DDF can be found here. Mark your calendars. 

One Too Many Many Mornings

"To love another human being is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The most refreshing aspect of Bootleg Series, Volume 9: The Witmark Demos was its reminder of the simple beauty of Dylan's early songwriting, unencumbered by layers of production. It brought me back to those early albums and made me appreciate again the rich wealth of material that preceded Highway 61 Revisited.

"One Too Many Mornings" was not part of this particular bootleg, but is of a similar species. Three verses, another lamentation.

When you look at the Dylan catalog the number of songs about relationships is a large one, perhaps in part because relationships play such a central role in our lives. Relationships are also one of the most challenging facets of our lives. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, which very few people plan for when proclaiming their vows.

Perhaps it's because there are so many situations that involve negotiations, as well as the difficulties of being objective in those many situations we're immersed in: money, family, time, expectations...

For this reason "One Too Many Mornings" touches a nerve. It's a song about movement... away from a painful present toward an uncertain future. Most people have experienced painful breakups even if not the married kind. Marriage only adds additional complications to the equation.

So the song begins with an evocative description of darkness setting in. Dogs are barking out there somewhere, but even that's going to fade. Nothing happening out there, but there's plenty happening inside his head.

Christopher Ricks, who devotes fifteen pages to this song in Dylan's Visions of Sin, points out that the song begins when it's not dark yet but getting there. Silence doesn't mean absence of sound, as Paul Simon pointed out. Words are formed even when no one listens or hears.

The second verse opens with the narrator gazing out toward a desolate street scene, but he doesn't see it so much as he is only looking in that direction. There's nothing really there, and when he turns to stare back into the room, there's emptiness here as well. So he turns again, looking back to the street, sidewalks, signs, a scene devoid of people, warmth or life.

John Hinchey feels the last two verses fail to live up to the first stanza, but I think it works because once you know the song you can't shake its melancholy effect. The second verse haunts, weighted with emptiness. The third verse plays out the root of it.

The couple had shared a space in time. Now that time was past. The narrator is alone, though it's possible his love is right there in the room when he looks back to the bed where they had lain. Except even if she is present, he is alone. Perhaps that is an even greater aloneness.

This is a very different story from "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" or "It Ain't Me, Babe." It's not all right.

To my surprise I'd already written about this song in 2012. Guess I'd forgotten that. Maybe I will write about it again sometime. Who knows? Tomorrow is such a long time...

Dylan performed the song 240 times in concert from 1966 to 2005.

One Too Many Mornings

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

Copyright © 1964, 1966 by Warner Bros. Inc.; 
renewed 1992, 1994 by Special Rider Music

One Too Many Mornings

Lately I’ve been learning song lyrics so I could do more performing, especially a few Dylan songs. I’ve always been the backup guy doing harmonies and playing harmonica, but I have a good voice and the only thing that was really stopping me from singing was laziness. I just didn’t make the time to learn the lyrics. So when it came my turn to suggest a song to the group I never had anything prepared.

Well, I’ve decided to change that, and it’s turned out to be more of a blessing than I expected. It’s one thing to listen to songs, and quite another to memorize them. In learning the song, you discover many nuanced elements you previously had missed. It’s probably something akin to my friend John Heino’s remark regarding his photography in which he recently stated, “I am seeing more than I ever saw before.” So it is that even though I’ve been listening to and appreciating Dylan music for near half a century, as I learn the lyrics I find still more reasons why the man has been so profoundly influential.

As you listen to this song, the introspective subject matter gives me the feeling that it would have been more at home on Another Side of Bob Dylan, his fourth studio album, than where it appeared on The Times They Are A-Changin’. The two albums do have a resonance as he was still in the unplugged period of his early career.

The first stanza runs like this:

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

Several things strike me here. First, there are the dogs. Here he uses the dogs to portray the sound of day and the sound of night, but as the stillness of the night settles in, there are other sounds shattering that silence, that stillness… the sounds inside his head.

The title of the song is introduced in the refrain, “For I’m one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind,” a grim assessment of his situation, delivered with eloquence and pain.

This introduction to the story is elaborated in the second stanza.

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

The first image is of a crossroads. Throughout literature and song we see references to crossroads. Tom Hanks in Castaway comes to a crossroads near the end of the film after he has returned from being lost. Blues singers of all stripes have put it out there, “I went down to the crossroads…” Fate and destiny are all wrapped up in the image.

The narrator stands on the doorstep, and for him it’s a crossroads moment because the highway is calling. He’s torn, and looks back to the bed they have shared. But then he looks once more to the street.

The word selection is interesting, because he looks out then back and then out but never uses the word look. He is on the doorstep, then turns his head, then gazes to the street, to the sidewalk and the sign. There is no beautiful vision here as his eyes start to fade. And we’re back into the refrain about their dying relationship and the weight of its emptiness.

Then verse three emerges, the summing up.

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

If you’ve ever experience this communication impasse you know how agonizing it can be. Misunderstanding, mixed up emotions, communication breakdown.

At the beginning of the song we here dogs barking, but how well can they articulate the nuanced meanings of language? Here in this last stanza, even with language there is no communication.

Everyone knows how painful breaking up can be. The pop way of saying it is expressed in a song like “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” Dylan’s poetic images may convey the same message, but in a manner more in keeping with the real rawness of that experience.

A few years later Dylan gave us a whole different take on the breaking of day with his song and album New Morning. Whatever he was experiencing here has been left behind and the songwriter is on a new page.