Ice Cream Will Always Be Here
There's nothing you have to do.
It must be something contrary in my nature that has persuaded me that a song featuring ice cream would be appropriate for January. But, nevertheless, when I considered which unreleased song I wanted to share with you, this is the one that pulled at me.
Hello! Here we are at the beginning – the first of what I intend to be twelve months of songs I will share with my paid subscribers. “Paid Subscribers” is jargon used by Substack — the platform (more jargon) on which I am writing. It all sounds very non-Jeni.
So, I shall say, “Welcome to the New Song Club.”
Thank you for coming along.
Here is your first song.
Ice Cream Will Always Be Here
Back in the pandemic, I missed seeing so many people in person. I had gone from touring across the USA and UK seeing hundreds of familiar faces each year to seeing barely anyone. This was the difficulty for so many of us, but given my particular job, it was a true shock. All of the gregariousness and camaraderie was reduced to a zoom call or postcard. I particularly missed my friends Fiona and Norman. Norman had dementia and Parkinson's and time between visits with him meant great shifts in his awareness of who I was. Because Norman had been my music mentor and an immense fan of my music, I felt especially bereft to see him lose his ability to play music and to exchange tunes with me. For most of his life, he could pick up a tune in moments. He could repair the most devastated instruments. And he liked my mandolin playing. He gave me confidence in my approach to music.
I am SO grateful to my friend and his wife Fiona for asking me to accompany them to the Underneath The Stars festival in Yorkshire the August before the pandemic. I was meant to be an extra pair of hands to help Norman navigate the festival grounds and sit with him if Fiona needed to get something or speak to someone, etc. I felt useful and content to be with my friends. Norman seemed to remember me from time to time and he was glad to hold my hand and take in the festival grounds and music. I was glad to be with some of my best friends in field full of music.
At one point, Fiona was getting ice cream for all of us and Norman looked at the tall pine trees surrounding the site and said to me, “Look at the trees. The trees will always be here.”
Norman was a person of very very few words before he had dementia, so to receive such a statement from him when he was largely non-verbal felt profound to me. I wrote down what he said as soon as we ate our ice creams and I took a picture of the wall of trees.
Norman was always a fan of ice cream and, even though he could no longer remember which flavor he liked best, Fiona always asked him to choose. I thought there was something beautiful about this and about so many things Fiona did as she cared for Norman. It probably would not have made any difference to Norman which ice cream he ate, but there was an acknowledgment of Norman’s dignity and Norman-ness in the way that Fiona asked him. I learned something profound from this as well. To me, this is love.
And this love finds its way into the final verse (the full lyric follows this essay). Even when you don’t have dementia, I think you can be uncertain or have moments when you need reassurance in relationships. “You will always be here, but sometimes I forget.”
In the fall of 2020 (during a lockdown pause), I met up with my friends Sarah Jackson and Alfred Hickling (the couple behind York Tour and both artists in their own right) and I spoke about making an album of songs based on Norman’s life. Alfred and I had collaborated on a few songs already and he knew Norman somewhat from Norman’s years as an employee and guitar repair genius of Antone’s Guitar Store – a famous emporium on the Beverley Road in Hull. Alfred and I did, in fact, write an entire album of songs based on the life of Norman Cross and we were able to send it to him and Fiona a few months before Norman passed away in May of 2021.
“Ice Cream Will Always Be Here” was one of the songs that I started in that collection of songs. I was messing around with banjo tunings and landed on a quirky one used by Earl Scruggs. I didn’t know the chords associated with that particular tuning, but I just started pressing down strings and discovering sounds I liked. These became the chords to the Ice Cream song. Later, Alfred investigated the chords via guitar and realized there was one we ended up calling “the Beatles chord" which always fell on the words “Ice Cream.” I started the lyrics and Alfred added others. Shortly, we had a song.
This is one of my favorite songs from my unreleased album of songs about my much-missed mentor, Norman Cross. He said a lot without saying anything at all.
By following these links, you can hear three other songs from my collection of songs about Norman Cross:
Last Time I Changed These Strings,
and
I hope you’ve enjoyed this! I look forward to sharing another song with you in February.
Your friend,
Jeni
Ice Cream Will Always Be Here
Music and Lyrics by Jeni Hankins and Alfred John Hickling
©Lulu Wall Music, BMI, and Sweet Pea Music, 2020
Ice cream will always be here.
There’s nothing you have to do –
a rainbow at the counter.
Magic in each scoop.
Hokey pokey, chocolate
to tempt the sweetest tooth.
Ice cream will always be here.
There’s nothing you have to do.
Trees will always be here
standing tall and strong.
I was once as sturdy.
Where has that person gone?
Have you seen the trees?
Have you been here long?
Trees will always be here
standing tall and strong.
It’s okay to be quiet
to look at the trees.
I’ll eat this ice cream
someone gave to me.
You will always be here.
Sometimes I forget.
Sometimes I remember
something you once said
after the party
when we went to bed.
You will always be here.
Sometimes I forget.
It’s okay to be quiet
to look at the trees.
I’ll eat this ice cream
someone gave to me.
I’ll eat this ice cream
I think you gave to me.
So touching, Jeni.
A tiny bit of ice cream was the last thing my dad had. He liked it.
So lovely and poignant. The song conveys what is gone, but also the wealth of love still present. Beautiful!