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Song Analysis

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Song Spotlight

This month MoneyChords.com is spotlighting our favorite Ohio songwriter, LF Lavery's (pictured above) song Clearwater Dreaming. This song should be required on every Clearwater Beach bar band's playlist. You can almost hear the steel drums and feel the white sand between your toes. Below are the lyrics as sung on the mp3 below.

LF Lavery explains how the song came about this way: "Basically, with a bad illness forcing me to winter in Clearwater Beach for the past several years, I picked a guitar back up after about a 40 year hiatus. My wife went back and forth to Ohio so I spent a good deal of time alone. With my surfing and water sking days over, I began writing some music again after 40 years. In this song, the people and the places are real and I tried to in some way capture the laid back pace and rhythm of the local scene rather than "helter skelter" goings on of the tourists and spring breakers. At 61 years of age, it never ceases to amaze me how some songs seem to write themselves. Clearwater Dreaming is such a song. A simple progression and sensory stimulation of the local people and places made it virtually flow on to the notebook."

Clearwater Dreaming
by LF Lavery

    G                                               
The sun will shine tomorrow morning, 
                    Am 
Like it tried to do today,
                          D
And the rain that gave no warning, 
                     G 
Will be gone and far away,  

But tonight down at Pier 60, 
                        Am
That’s where everybody comes, 
                     D                              
To drink those Margaritas, 
                           G
Watch the Gulf swallow the sun.

G           C        
Here on the white sands, 
            G 
Across from the bay, 
                   D
I’ll be Clearwater Dreaming, 
                  G
Half a block from Mandalay.   

Captain Bill and his sweet Linda, 
Sailed in just on time, 
To meet Sheryl and Jerry, 
At the bar they call Scene Of the Crime.    
And the lights from the hi-rise, 
Shine like diamonds on the beach, 
They remind me of her eyes, 
And they're just as out of reach.

And there on the white sands, 
Just across from the bay, 
I’ll be Clearwater Dreaming, 
Half a block from Mandalay.   

Night breeze moves the palm trees, 
Darkness cools the air, 
As I look through the moonlight, 
I think I see you there.  
But it’s all in my mind, 
I’m as wrong as I can be, 
Cause I've known for a long time, 
You can't see a memory. 

And here on the white sands,
Just across from the bay, 
I’ll be Clearwater Dreaming, 
Half a block from Mandalay, 
Half a block from Mandalay.

To hear a guitar & vocal mp3 arrangement of this song performed by the songwriter, click here.

For the complete set of lyrics, click here.

If you would like to contact the songwriter, you can send him an e-mail by clicking here.