The
Facts of Life
(Tookes/Joubert) 3:23
The Facts Life is pensive, has a simple, beautiful
melody line. Of it Darryl Tookes says, “I don’t know
many things, I don’t much at all, but the truth of the matter
is, I know I love my family, my wife, my children, my friends. I
know I feel that and that’s what the song is really all about.
It’s a song of surrender, of honesty, and says to me, ‘OK,
if you are willing to listen to just one song, listen to this one
song and it will explain to you who you are listening to.’”
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New England Morning
(Tookes) 4:28 (Track 2 piano &
voice; Track 13 orchestra & voice)
New England Morning, the song, tells of a man stepping
into a dream and how, slipping back out, his view of the “real
world” may be changed forever. On a cold and gray New England
morning, Darryl Tookes woke up at his house in Connecticut and the
lyrics of the song poured out, a poetic rendering of a dream he
had just had, and the melody followed--instantly. Championing the
idea of performance with orchestra and having recently arranged
The Facts of Life, Darryl Tookes and Joseph Joubert were in the
groove to create the lush, evocative New England Morning orchestration.
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Perfect One
(Tookes) 4:07
People hear songs the way they do. Joseph Joubert
hears Perfect One as a hauntingly beautiful love song and his piano
arrangement mimics violins, flute and oboe. Some Tookes fans liken
Perfect One to a paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm. Darryl looks forward
to the day when the song is so well known that when he walks into
a pub in Dublin, he hears a bunch of guys lustily singing, “When
I hold you in my arms, I know you are my perfect one.”
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Tomorrow’s Never Promised
(Tookes) 4:06
Darryl Tookes says, “I heard Joseph play an
arrangement that he wrote right after September 11th of A Mighty
Fortress and he was just driven. You could feel all the pathos and
the madness and the concern and the hope in his soul when you hear
the way he plays that thing. He said to me ‘You have to do
something.’
Something to me was just saying, it wasn’t such
a deliberate thought, it would just call me, ‘Darryl, Darryl,
you have to write about living in the moment, you have to write
about that, and don’t even reveal in this song the fear and
pain and the tentativeness about life that is making you write this
because if you reveal an ounce of it, you have completely failed
to deliver this song the way it’s got to be delivered.’
’’
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Fields of Gold
(Sting) 4:00
In this pastoral song of remembrance, played in D
major, Joseph Joubert’s piano becomes the rolling fields of
gold. Notice Darryl Tookes’ humming, like reflective strokes
upon a cello.
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Too Darn Hot
(Porter) 3:12
Expecting a straight melody line from this Kiss Me,
Kate classic? Switch gears! Here’s playful, extreme, improvisational
jazz--a performance tune caught in one guise at the recording studio.
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You and the Night and the Music
(Dietz/Schwartz) 2:54
Joseph Joubert says, “I had to give myself a
challenge for piano and voice to be an orchestra.” Listen
to their astonishing skill as Darryl Tookes and Joseph Joubert and
the Music become one! Word has it Joseph rehearsed this chart by
playing Beethoven sonatas late into the wee hours.
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A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
(Sherwin/Maschwitz) 3:22
Dedicated by Tookes/Joubert to TBM Records’
Tanya Bickley, this lilting saloon song starts off with a wandering,
spoken introduction, a la Fred Astaire, and goes into the rubato
section. Just when you think it may be balladish, it takes off.
Pure magic!
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La Fiesta
(Tookes/Kriedman) 3:25
Writing this upbeat, little samba for his brother,
an aviation executive, Darryl Tookes says, “Well, you know
this is the one, it doesn’t have a lot of words to it, and
the sky metaphor is for my brother. So, ‘in the sky we are
dancing on the wind, butterflies, la fiesta for my friends, buddies
till the end of time, and time again you have seen me through. How
could I last a single day without you?’
Then it comes back and asks the question, ‘How
can I find a simple new way to say I love you?’ So, say it
in another language. It is the same lyric translated into the Portuguese,
which is certainly my favorite language to sing in. And I apologize
for any diction that is not quite perfect, but it is, I have been
told from a few native Portuguese speakers, Brazilians, that most
of it sounds really like indigenous Portuguese from the Bahia region.”
Of the piano accompaniment, Mr. Joubert says, “Well, I am
trying to be a guitar, which is a characteristic of this kind of
samba.”
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Soul Mate
(Tookes) 3:23
Soul Mate is an edgy, contemporary, jovial song about
a man searching for his soul mate. Says Tookes, “I played
Soul Mate for maybe a half dozen friends before we recorded it,
just me clumsily playing it at the piano and singing it and trying
to remember the words, and they were all singing along with me and
saying, ‘I can’t wait to get this record with this song
on it!’”
Tookes continues, “I have to mention Ramsey
Lewis, a jazz piano player who’s been around a long time.
He’s got the gospel feeling and he’s a lot of people’s
favorite piano player. He had a couple big hits when I was a little
boy. One is called Wade in the Water, which was a gospel song. The
other was called The In Crowd and there was a playfulness about
those songs that here many, many years later I still enjoy hearing
them. They stand up on their own and they just have a life about
them and to me that was the inspiration for Soul Mate. I resisted
writing a song with that title for a long time because I didn’t
want to get into gimmicky concepts, but that phrase has been around
a long time and I think it has stood the test of time.”
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The King of Love
(Baker/Ancient Irish) 3:50
The King of Love is the only song on the New England
Morning album that TBM went with on the first take. Joseph Joubert
commented, “It is that haunting, folk-like melody that draws
me. There are certain hymns that have that quality and this is certainly
one. We felt it. It’s a spiritual song, it’s a moving
melody. We just felt the moment.”
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Forever Free
(Tookes) 1:42
In just over 90 seconds, in 5-beat meter, backed by
a simple Tookes melody reminiscent of Aaron Copland, Forever Free
opens with the lyric, “There’s a time to dance, a time
to sing, there’s a time to do most everything.” The
song continues, a wise man summing up the heart and life’s
important moments, concluding with “we shall know the time
has come to be ever thankful and forever free.” It’s
a song that could warm the heart of a nation seeking the deeper,
simpler, truer meanings of life.
About Forever Free, Darryl Tookes says, “That’s
one of the songs that couldn’t get written if Joseph and I
weren’t best friends as well as musical partners because you
can have a musical partnership, or any kind of business partnership,
and it could be great and you guys don’t have to get along
where you don’t completely trust each other. They’re
a whole lot of examples. But, more than a deeper marriage, more
than a soul mate, to have a relationship with Joseph allows me to
do that song. It does more than allow me, it stretches me.”
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