Ball of Wax 61 Songs: “Bitter and the Herb (for Marco)”

Our dear friend Brittain Ashford returns with a gorgeous ode, all piano and clarinet and Brittain’s smoky alto. You could imagine this song being picked out in a dark bar at the end of the night, barely noticed except by the broodingest, keenest-eared patrons – which is appropriate, as it was written in tribute to a bartender who is no longer with us. Perhaps the deftest moment in this elegantly crafted song comes when she sings “sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name” – in a song about a bartender – and it doesn’t make you crack a smile, or wink and nod, at least not right away. It flows into the next lines, about friends who will give it to you straight, about whether there are lessons to be learned, and it just works. And then, sure, you go, “ha, Cheers,” and imagine the subject of this song doing the same from the great beyond (and oh, how I wish I believed in that beyond sometimes). It’s a beautiful reminder that sometimes funny things can be fraught with grief, and that it’s okay to be funny when you’re grieving.