#73 – The Night I Painted The Sky
Day #73 – The Night I Painted The Sky
This is an absolutely beautiful song. The lyrics, the melody, the meaning, the atmosphere… all combine to give the listener something very extraordinary to partake in. I think Jimmy had an incredible gift for telling a story while at the same time painting a picture that was so easy for the listeners mind to see, all the while giving it just the right melody to create something stunningly beautiful.
***
Original post from 11/13/2023
Day #73 – The Night I Painted The Sky
The Night I Painted The Sky was released on JB’s 1995 album Barometer Soup, a place we have stopped on a few times on this journey.
“Oh I am still a child, When it comes to something wild, That was the night I painted the sky…”
Barometer Soup was recorded in January and February 1995 at Shrimpboat Sound in Key West. It was Jimmy’s own recording studio and back then, he was still releasing albums every year. He always had a cover song or two on his records, but most of them were original songs that he was writing, sometimes as part of a team, sometimes solo. Writing credits for this song go to Jimmy, along with Coral Reefers Roger Guth, Russ Kunkel, Peter Mayer, and Jay Oliver.
We get some history about this song in the Directed By Delaney video from 2020, and this song was re-recorded for Jimmy’s Songs You Don’t Know By Heart album from the same year. I will share the original version, but the 2020 version is quite lovely.
“The rockets in the air, And the people everywhere, Put away their differences for a while…”
Jimmy wrote this song about an adventure he shared with Larry “Groovy” Gray, a longtime friend. Groovy had a fireworks company in St. Barts called Moon Glow. Jimmy describes it a couple times as “ragtag” affair, and then he laughs.
Groovy asked Jimmy to help do a show on the neighboring island of St. Marten, and Jimmy went along with Groovy and crew, and they prepared the set up. Groovy explained to Jimmy that everything got wired to a box, then the box sets everything off in proper timing. But something went wrong with the auto box, and the men had to scramble about in a sandy trench in the darkness, setting some fireworks off by hand while working on rewiring the show. It all worked out, but Jimmy mentions a little bit of panic and afterwards, “we had a laugh about it”.
“I dug in the sand like a boy on a mission, And there in my hands, A pyro’s delight, A bombadier, A nighttime magician, I spark the sky as rockets fly from view…”
Jimmy mentions Groovy’s company and that in St. Barts “the hill” got set on fire a couple times, and people watched the fireworks show, then hung around to watch the show of putting out the fire on the hill. He mentions “ragtag” again then gets a little emotional, thinking of his good friend Groovy, who died in a plane crash in 2003. Jimmy wrote this song ten years before Groovy’s death but revisits the story twenty years later. Time sneaks around us in funny ways.
This song, like many, remind me that Jimmy was deeply connected to his environment and words, and he is very poetic in his lyrics. This song gives us phrases like “midnight rainbow”, “fiction addiction”, and the “colors shine in fiery rhyme tonight”. It is also gentle and beautiful and certainly paints a picture in the listeners’ mind.
Jimmy smiles when he talks about getting invited on this pyrotechnic adventure and says “I’ve always loved fireworks”. Me too Jimmy, and I also love this song.
Please enjoy The Night I Painted The Sky. I have included the link in the comments below.
***
This is a song that gets stuck in my head, like a little ear worm, but I do not mind at all. I think it is a beautiful song and I will never get tired of hearing it, whether its playing on repeat in my mind, although I prefer to listen to Jimmy version, which is much better than what my mind can produce. We have the song to enjoy, but then thanks to his interview with his daughter Delaney, we get a little bit of back story that describes the inspiration for the song, as well as get to see how much the song means to Jimmy. Priceless information and priceless moments that I am so grateful to have heard with Jimmy himself sharing the story.
Stacy
Please enjoy The Night I Painted The Sky. I have included the link below. Enjoy!
The link is from Jimmy’s official YouTube channel, which I have no personal affiliation with.
