Mr. Rain
(words and music by Randall Belt and Brian Kious)

Mr. Rain comes down to me, has a horn of plenty
Should he wait 'till next Tuesday, April 20
That will give us time

Just between us nothing seems impossible
Nothing seems so improbable

Mr Rain falls out of the sky - drops by awhile
Says that now its not too late its worth the while
Hoping for his day

And just between us nothing seems impossible
Nothing seems so improbable

Coming down - going fast
Falling out from the skyline
Gotta get up - gotta get up
Gotta get up to rise

Washing away, rolling aside
some come out to smile
Don't be late - call me away - call me away to rise


Mr Rain comes down today - has a horn of plenty
He didn't wait till next Tuesday, July 20


(P) & (C) 2013 Barleyfields Records (ASCAP); Randall Belt (ASCAP); Brian Kious (ASCAP) 
All Rights Reserved


Song Notes:

You will hear Nil playing on his genuine Sri Lankan Tablas on this song.
Randy is singing lead and harmony vocals, and Brian is playing the mandolin.

A banjo is also used, but played in a way to give it the sound and effect of something more like the Turkish instrument called the Saz.
The mandolin is played in a way that gives it an almost medieval feel and tone.  The song started out as a song Randy wrote on acoustic guitar and vocal with a distinctly southwestern american/hispanic flair.  That's what it was intended to be but as the band converged on the song it began to have a mind of its own. 

As the song was built from bare bones guitar and vocal it began aquiring a sound all its own as Brian added the mandolin bits and Nil added the tablas.  We wanted to do somethign very different with the song and thats what happened.  Nil achieved the gong sounds by tying a piece of cloth around a mallet to soften the blow on the crash cymbals and give it an oriental flavor as well.  The result is a mixture of world sounds but with that distinct Barley Station undertone.  The song was actually loosely based around the Civil Rights Act of 1871 signed in to law by President Grant on April 20, 1871. Some of the law's provisions still exist today as codified statutes with the most important still-existing provision being 42 U.S.C. § 1983: Civil action for deprivation of rights.

The vocal harmonies built using ideas from a blend of things like Gregorian style harmonics and ancient Ugaritic influenced bits derived from the harmonic styles from one of the oldest known songs in the world ( discovered in the Syrian city of ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) which has an equivalent of the diatonic major scale a fact which flies in the face of most musicologists' views that ancient harmony was virtually non-existent (or even impossible) and the scale only about as old as the Ancient Greeks, 2000 years ago. 

And its always right up our alley to fly in the face of the "experts".