Driving Around and Round Again Copyright ©2020, 2022, 2024 Alphasongs LLC, all rights reserved. Music and Lyrics by Matthew L. Kearns Heading Out I’m driving around and round again.   Love driving around and round again… Driving on the Arboretum Way. See the children play. See trees above, they're beautiful! I love taking drives in my car. Verse 1 Driving in my car, looking around the town. I'm heading to that good drive-in with those tasty milk shakes. Driving around and by the intersection, into the traffic. I see so many cars around as we head to the city. Driving in their cars. They're heading into town where they work for their lives. Refrain 1 I'm driving round, that motor sound. The traffic lights, line up just right. I'm on a roll, I wave hello. She smiles right back. I feel on track. All the people driving, driving, driving, I see traffic coming up but I'm not worried. I'm happy driving. I see traffic open up ahead. Ah! Verse 2 Driving in my car, got through the traffic jam, and now I'm back on the boulevard and the music's playing. Driving around and to the working part of town. I see factories. The wheels keep on turning, always keep on turning, always driving in my car. Seeing the tents of those who have no place to call home. Refrain 2 I see them shiv'ring in their tatter'd clothes, looking hungry. I wonder why we have so much poverty, have so much misery? We can do better than that. We should do better than that. We got to help them somehow. Help them in better ways. We will drive. We will remember what we saw here. Let's go home. Verse 3 Driving in my car, thinking about this town and what I saw today. There are so many faces. I love driving around and round to see new places. Back on the boulevard and I'm on my way to get back home today, and here I'm driving in my car. Sunshine shoots through the leaves, through my car's sunroof. Coming Home I'm driving on the Arboretum Way. See them play. And see the trees above they're beautiful. I love taking drives. Now I'm home. Notes Driving Around and Round Again began on Valentine’s Day 2020. I was preparing to sing in a weekend concert series with the Kirkland Choral Society (Dr. Glenn Gregg, conductor), featuring two works by composer John Muehleisen. We were premiering a commissioned work titled The Gathering, as well as another recent piece titled Love Is. The second piece moved me enough to present the Love Is score to my wife as part of a Valentine’s Day gift. Later that day a four-bar phrase popped into my head, and over the next week this phrase blossomed into a song. Within a week, I had 108 bars of five-part harmony. After the weekend concerts, I went to our after-party. A few minutes later, John and his wife Lynn arrived and sat right across the table from me. During our conversation, I shared an early draft of Driving Around and Round Again with John, who offered to review more of my work and extended an invitation to study with him. This song opened up what has become an amazing journey in musical composition and publishing, like a garage door opening and going out for a drive. I have been studying regularly with John since June 2020. The song starts with the aforementioned four-bar phrase on the lyric, “I’m driving around and round again. Love driving around and round again…” A little engine noise to get started (“rum rum rum”), and we’re off and running. The four bars repeat without breaks throughout the entire 108 bars. Around this central theme, the other four parts weave their way through different sections of the song, with a story about a drive around town, sung mainly by the altos. Musically, the challenge was to create enough variation around the repeating phrase to give this piece a sense of direction. The lyrics clearly establish the sense of a journey, while the music reflects different aspects of that journey, particularly during the two refrains, where the change to the relative minor key reflects a more serious leg of our journey, giving us some things to think about on our drive home. Happily, despite the change of key, the repeating phrase still works with the minor key with minimal alteration. The repeating phrase becomes a persistent anchor against the ever-changing harmonies in the other voices. (And who is that crazy baritone honking “Bee-bee-beep” in traffic all the time?) ­­­­Performance Notes • This piece is scored for a small-to-medium vocal ensemble. • For more creativity, improvisational beat-boxing can enhance rhythms even more. Have fun with it!­ “Audio tracks generated with Cantamus software”.