1972 Just Like A Farm

Written by Mark Fielding Darden in 1972

Written in 1972, this was the fourth song I ever wrote. It was inspired by my Aunt Francis Knott's farm and home in the Piedmont hills of North Carolina. She lived on the Fielding Knott Road in Granville County NC. I was (middle) named after her husband and his father.

Steve Nellis recorded it for me a few years later in the Canal Zone on a Sony cassette player, and I then carried that around with me for years (fifty?) and finally loaded it into my Protools program in 2022. The only tracks on it at that time were my guitar and my vocal, and my vocal was slightly flat in two places. Bill McDonald, my music guru buddy, tuned the vocal for me.

Then I added my voice again for an alto harmony. Then Kristin Kanady added hers for the soprano you hear floating along so lovely at the top. And after posting it online for a month and getting 75 views or so during that time, I asked my old friend, Milton, to add the bass. So I had to take the song offline everywhere and repost it with the new instruments and voices.

This song has been down a long road. It’s the road I’m thinking of…

Mfd: guitar, vocals, song, video (2023)
Milton Gore: bass
Kristin Kanady: soprano
Steve Nellis: original recorder
Bill McDonald: engineering and support

Recorded first in Panama and then “fixed up” here in North Carolina at the Mountain Road Studio in Oxford.