Music Review // Allen Dobb "Ballad of Willie Holmes"

 

If you're going to call a song "Ballad of" something or someone, there are certain expectations of how it should sound.   Allen Dobb finds those beautifully, as this begins with acoustics and perhaps a slight touch of piano, but as the chorus kicks in there are backing vocals and a banjo as well, giving it that feeling from going to a solo song to a full on band.   This definitely feels like the type of song you would sing about someone in this manner.

So the question becomes just who is Willie Holmes and what do we have to gain from hearing his story?   One of the first things said about him says: "Willie was no different than you or me".   This is a good start because it puts him as that common man and, as such, anyone listening to this song should be able to relate with it because they can see this being about them just as easily.

Diving deeper into the verses and then hitting the chorus is where this song comes up for interpretation.   One of the biggest lines in here which stays with me after several listens simply says: "Things you'd have done if only you had known".  This gives off the idea that hindsight is 20/20 and if we knew what was going to happen before it happened, maybe we wouldn't do it-- maybe we'd make better decisions.  

There is a part about Willie Holmes going left when he should've gone right and for that "his tomorrow was too late".   This is where it's tricky.  Had he known that was going to kill him, maybe he wouldn't have done it.  But also maybe we don't know these things until it's too late.  So in some larger aspect of this all, I think the lesson to learn here is that you don't always know what's going to happen, but sometimes you have to just make a decision and let the chips fall where they may.