Little Penny - This song has been around a little while. It’s definitely in elementary school by now, if not middle school. I want to say it was mostly written on a snowy night sometime around 2011. Jesus. Anyway, my wife Jenny was thumping away at her acoustic bass as we sat in our living room. She plucked out that opening riff. The opening riff, unbeknownst to us, is pretty much the same opening riff in the great Don Williams song ‘Tulsa Time’. No matter, we still took that fucker and ran with it.
Next was the D F G verse, which wasn’t all that unique per se, but when I came up with a melody that was more major than minor, things got more interesting. The words pretty much came together once we had that first line. Do I know where Del Rio and Little Penny are? Nah. But they sounded cooler than saying Manchester and Gualala, so thanks to whatever map of Northern Cali I happened to be looking at when I found those two town names. I just wanted it to kind of capture the vibe of a trip to my sister-in-law’s place out around Anchor Bay we took a few months prior.
The chorus just came to us. Pretty instantaneous. The coyote on the fence image was a real thing that the farmers up in NorCal would do, tie a coyote carcass to a fence. I guess as a warning to other coyotes. Seeing something like that will stick with ya.
I know there are a few versions of this tune out there, but I think my fave is the one that she and I knocked out in some studio in Montgomery County, PA somewhere back in 2013. In fact, here it is (complete with tack piano played by yours truly and a slide part played on a guitar I wish I still had):
Little Penny
Came from Del Rio, wound up in Little Penny
Played kick the can around Anchor Bay
We still got burned, though the sun there wasn’t any
Stepped on a banana slug at Jess and Jay’s
There’s no hotel
The back seat, you’re sleeping
A coyote strung up on the fence
I drink cheap wine because it’s a buyer’s market
I made a mint, don’t ask me how
I know a place where they roll out the carpet
Roll out the barrels, roll out the fog
Well well well
Looks like you’ve been creeping
and I can see right through your skin
There’s no hotel, the back seat you’re sleeping...