Over the Edge

I love co-writing songs with people I love. And I write a lot of songs about people who are dead now.

Put it all together and what do you get? A posthumous co-written song by my friend David Warren and me.

Davey died, tragically, and a friend of his was going through a box of stuff looking for something else and stumbled across some lyrics Davey wrote, and sent them on to me, knowing I’d know what to do with them. They were good, although possibly unfinished. I can’t remember which lines who wrote – the first verse was entirely Davey, and I think the rest of it was mostly Davey, though I do remember having to add a few lines here and there. The bridge was all me, telling part of the untold story.

Davey was a complicated guy, a troubled guy, but my, don’t we just love our troubled songwriter types. Well, yes. He and I grew up on the same block and rode the school bus together for several years. I was two years older, but his brother Scott, a truly fantastic artist, was in my class. Davey almost always sat with me, or near me. I never knew why until decades after the fact: he said I kept the bullies away.

Little old me. What? How? I don’t know, but something about me kept the jerks from messing with him, and so we became friends. As good a reason as any, i suppose.

He joined the Navy when he graduated, which for someone already dealing with an alcohol dependency might not have been the best plan, but so it goes. I completely lost track of him. He lived in Japan for a long time, and in England for a while. Then he ended up in Montana, and we reconnected on social media, and it took a little jog to my memory, because it had been a long time, but yes, I remembered him and all the time on the bus. We kept in touch, and eventually he moved back to Iowa to be closer to his mom when his step-dad passed away. We kept threatening to get together, but when it came down to it, I think he was reluctant because he wasn’t in the best shape. I finally stopped out to see him to take him a present I made for his grandson in Japan, and we spent a little while chatting. That was the first week of Covid. By the end of the summer he was gone.

I went to the hospice house with my guitar to play some music for him. He was already in a coma, but struggling, restless, and fighting. I pulled out my guitar and played a few songs for him, and within minutes he was completely at peace, and he died a few hours later. I was honored to be able to offer him that comfort.

A few days later I got song lyrics in my Messenger from a friend of his I had never met, but who knew I was important to Davey, and knew I’d do the right thing with these lyrics. I surely hope I have. I kind of forgot about this song until I went on this recording binge. I found scraps and demos of this one, but never found a completed recording, so into the hopper it went, and here it is. Michael heard it and commented, “It’s incredibly sad that this collaboration can’t continue.”

Over The Edge
Alma Drake and David Warren, 2020, Creative Commons Attrib.

Let us consider the edge
Is it near? Are we close?
Are we far away from home?
Is it already too late?
Shall we stop, should we wait?
How far can we go?

Can we just risk a glance
over the edge?
Don’t you want to know?
I’ll hold your legs, brace my feet
You can trust me

I’ll be your mission control
As you hang, as I hold you
Suspended over space
Over a great unknown
I can feel your fascination
How far can we go?

Yeah, I can still hold on
a little more
I know you want to know
I’ll hold on tight, brace my feet
You can trust me

There are secrets in the spaces between
Where we are and what we want
It’s not clear if you were
Hanging out or hanging on 
‘Cross a threshold and over the edge
Sometimes we have to know
But I’m glad it’s me holding you
so you can’t just let go

I gotta pull you back
while I still can
I know you don’t want it to end
But it’s nearly too late
No, this can’t wait
You life is in my hands

Was it worth the risk?
Over the edge
It’s the only way to show
There’s nothing to fear
There’s nothing down there

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