Perfik
(Jody Stecher/Vegetiboy Music BMI)
On my 73rd birthday, I awoke at dawn having had a lovely dream about meeting some ancient musicians. They each looked to be several hundred years old. Their race was impossible to determine as their faces seemed to contain all nations. They made fabulous music and when anything happened they would intone, as a charm or spell, the word “perfik”. Then they would laugh heartily. It reminded me a bit of Joseph Spence. They played fiddles and small rugged 8-string guitars that had 4 single courses and 2 double courses. There were 2 B strings and one of the lower wound courses was doubled and tuned in octaves. Throughout the dream was a fiddle playing a waltz in the key of G natural. And that’s where I set my song, in G.
Perfik
(Jody Stecher/Vegetiboy Music BMI)
I’ll sing you a song of a dream that I dreamed
I met some musicians I surely esteemed
Though their lives were not free from worries and fears
They had deemed all things perfik for hundreds of years
chorus:
And “perfik” was what they all said
And sometimes they sang it instead
Some played the fiddle, some the guitar
It made all things perfik the way that they are
The way that they sang it gave my heart ease
They sang from a place as deep as my knees
Below heart, belly, waist, thighs, calves, and feet
The earth it did rumble and it sounded so sweet
Everything’s perfik when I’m with you
Things go cattywampus and that’s perfik too
Every creature on earth every star in the blue
They deem all things perfik for me and for you.
Jody Stecher: lead vocal and mandolin
Keith Little: harmony vocal and guitar
Chad Manning: fiddle
Paul Knight: bass