Album: Smartie Mine
Year: 1999
Dan Bern’s most ambitious move to date was 1999’s two-CD Smartie Mine, a rock-solid collection of folk-punk tunes that also allowed him to stretch out with remakes and covers and craft great songs on subjects like Pete Rose, Marilyn Manson, Vincent Van Gogh, Tiger Woods and his own feelings about being a “New Dylan.”
Two discs meant that he also could stretch the song lengths, with songs establishing a riff and riding it for several minutes, like the two songs that end the first-disc, the piano-driven “Ballerina” and slide-guitar-filled “Simple.”
“Simple” starts slowly, with a mid-tempo snare-driven jump rhythm — not a Bo Diddley beat per se, but definitely a distant cousin, say, Steve Diddley — as Bern gets philosophical:
It’s simple to run and it’s simple to fall
It’s simple to do nothing at all
It’s simple to hide and it’s simple to feel
It’s simple to spin round like a wheel
But it’s hard to do something that’s yours
So far, so good, but it’s when he hits the chorus that the song takes off. Over a melody line that seems to stretch to infinity, Bern sings:
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Of course, it’s not a simple as it looks on paper. What makes “Simple” for me his how he sings that chorus: elongating the vowels: “Soommmmmme daaaaaaaaaayyys, I just like to dreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeam.” And like “I Believe” he mixes it up as the song goes on, sometimes fucking with the melody, sometimes changing which word he elongates.
Meanwhile, the slide guitar starts battling for control of the song, so Bern responds by adding more singers as he repeats that chorus over and over and over and over and over.
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Some days I just like to dream
Because Bern purposely fucks with his singing as the song goes on, “Simple” is one of those songs I love to sing along with, because there’s no way I can ruin it.
Fan-made video for “Simple”