While I'm prepping songs for the tour in November, I thought it would be fun to make some moody images inspired by my lyrics.
1/21 "Vasilisa Trilogy" (album: The Wanderlings Volume One) is the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful from Russian folklore, as told by Jane Yolen in "Favourite Folktales from around the World."
I love this story. It has a creepy little doll with glowing eyes who, if you give it the best morsels of food from your plate, will tell you exactly how to get out of the trouble you're in. Even if that trouble is handed to you by your miserable step-family, or Baba Yaga herself. In this story, even the skulls have fiery eyes.
Give me folklore or give me death. Folklore about death or cheating death, even better. I love folklore and mythology so much I coined a word for the songs I write based on these stories: the Wanderlings.
I couldn't bring myself to cut almost anything from this tale when putting it to music, so the song became a trilogy lasting more than 13 minutes, with key changes, time signature changes, recurring motifs, and a hell of a lot of memorization.
It's one of my favourite songs to perform, especially with Bill, Jen & Brenda - and we'll do it on Dec 3 as part of the "Keys, Strings and Other Things" concert series in Danville IN.
