I Do Believe It's Time

Catch a cannonball, now

To take me down the line

My bag is sinkin' low

And I do believe it's time

To get back to Miss Fanny

You know she's the only one

Who sent me here with her

Regards for everyone

 

- The Weight; words and music by Robbie Robertson

 Robbie Robertson has passed away at 80.  I love The Band.  I consider their second album, called, coincidentally, The Band, as a perfect album.  You can read what I thought about it here.  An excerpt:

 

The music is difficult to categorize.  It's not exactly rock, it's not really country, it's sort of, but not quite, old-timey music.  Americana is the label sometimes applied which is funny since four of the five band members were Canadians yet they had the sensibility required to capture the sound and feel of an America that had disappeared well before 1969.  If one were to try to describe the time and place in which the songs are set it'd be from the end of the Civil War through the Depression with locales primarily in the South but also including the Great Plains and Midwest and mostly in rural white America.  The Band sounds of the time about which they are singing about and it's a collection of songs by turn witty and bawdy, poignant and knowing, sympathetic and hopeful, nostalgic and fun.

Their debut album, Music From Big Pink, was only a smidge less perfect, and later albums included many gems.

 

It was Robertson who wrote, or co-wrote, most of their songs.  He was one of two musicians I followed on Twitter (the other being Mark Knopfler), and just a few days ago he posted 86th birthday greetings to Garth Hudson, now the only remaining living member of The Band.

Here are three favorites from that second album (King Harvest, The Unfaithful Servant, Whispering Pines with its heartbreaking vocal by Richard Manuel), along with The Weight from their debut.  The version of The Weight is done with The Staple Singers.  Verses sung, in order, by Levon Helm, Mavis Staples, Pops Staples, Rick Danko, and everyone.  Robertson wrote it and is one the double neck guitar.