Listen to 'If We Were Gourmanche I'd Bring Your Dad Goats'

My sister got married last month, so I took it upon myself to write a song about her romance. I called up Jeremy, now her husband, and asked him to tell me the story of how he came to fall in love with my sister.

He told me about how he had felt during that time when he was single. He had acted pretty casual whenever he had been interested in people and he felt he had started to develop a pattern where girls he liked would just start to see him as a friend. This time, he wanted to make more of an effort to be clear that he was interested in dating, not just hanging out. He said he had lots of female friends back then but was tired of "living in the friend zone." Little quotes like that are what I look for when writing songs about people, so I knew right away that would be my chorus. (It was almost the title of the song, but I like this sillier title better. It's long and strange, like a Sufjan Stevens title.)

Jeremy asked her out, and made sure to bring flowers just so it was perfectly clear that they were on a date. It was winter in Washington DC, and he hadn't allotted enough time to go to the flower shop, so my sister waited in the bitter cold by a metro stop for about twenty minutes until he showed up. I was laughing to myself as he told me that part, because it probably would've been better to just be on time. But the date went well. They spent hours and hours together at dinner and coffee shops and walking around town and finally kissed in the wee hours of the morning.

They dated for a while, but my sister had planned to spend a summer in Africa, so she stuck to her plan. Jeremy sent her off with a specially curated mix tape. They hadn't yet used the L word, yet they pined for each other and when they finally reunited there were declarations of love and they started to get serious. So sweet! Awwww.

The wedding spot was a ranch that had horses and goats. My father, who had spent time in Africa in the peace corps before I was born, mentioned that in the part of Upper Volta where he had lived, a young man would have offered the bride's father goats in exchange for his daughter. That became an in joke for us, and I just had to sneak that into the song lyrics.

The wedding rolled around, and it was beautiful. Not a dry eye in the house. INstead of a toast, I sang this song at the wedding. In this version the lyrics have evolved a little. In the original version I had written

I'm tired of living in the friend zone
I wanna take you home, get you alone
But instead I keep making irrelevant comments like a troll.

You nerdcore readers will get that line - a troll is somebody who enters obnoxious comments in a forum thread - but it turned out everybody was mystified by that lyric, and several people asked me about it, and it stood out like a sore thumb. Okay, know your audience, I guess... besides, it's supposed to be in Jeremy's voice, not in mine, so it was the right decision to rewrite the line to be more accessible. But I still sing it that way to myself.

The official lyrics:

If We Were Gourmanche I'd Bring Your Dad Goats

Watching baseball with a softball dyke in D.C.
when her friend from college stops by, I think I like what I see
She's cute, and smart, working on a degree
I think she assumed I was gay... birds of a feather tend to flock that way
I was kinda fond of 'er... I wanted to squeeze her like an anaconda
But she thought I was gay, and then she went to Uganda

I'm tried of living in the friend zone
I wanna take you home, get you alone, but instead I keep
nodding and smiling and shivering in the cold
Watching Almost Famous I can feel it in the air, you're waiting for my move
I can't get my nerve up and the credits roll

Drinkin with a softball dyke at an Irish dive
Look who's back from Uganda, I guess you made it out alive
I say by the way did you know I'm straight?
One of these halcyon days, you and I should go on a date.
She gets to... the rendez vous first, and has to wait
The flower shop was farther than I thought and... I show up late

I'm tried of living in the friend zone
I wanna take you home, get you alone but instead I keep
nodding and smiling and shivering in the cold
Watching Almost Famous I can feel it in the air, you're waiting for my move
I finally kiss you as the credits roll

Hey you're pretty cool let's hang out
Oh, you're going to Africa
Hey you're pretty great let's date
Oh, you're going to Africa again

Snow falling in the lights on the walking bridge
Your rosy cheeks in that misty glow
Don't want it to end so I miss the metro
Sorry I left my ID at home
But I made you a mix tape with copious notes
If we were Gourmanche, I'd bring your Dad goats
Girlfriend and boyfriend doesn't sound right
We ought to discuss what we want outta life
Partner's pretentious, and "shorty" is wrong
I want you my whole life long

I'm tried of living in the friend zone I wanna
take you home, get you alone But instead I keep
nodding and smiling and shivering in the cold
(I've already got too many female friends, I want you in the morning)
Watching Almost Famous I can feel it in the air, my destiny is .. oooh
Waking up next to you.

 

Thanks for reading.

Sep 1, 2010

----------------------------------- READ or POST COMMENTS -----------------------------------