Z. Mulls' "Rumpelstiltskin, Dead at 95"

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to the Nathan's and Roncast, where we explore the craft and art of songwriting. I'm your host, Michael G. Ronstadt, and for today's little mini episode, we're going to feature a song called Rumpelstiltskin Dead at 95, written by my good friend Z. Malls. Now, you may not know Z, but you've heard a song called Me and My Purple Monkey if you've heard me play music. And he's the one who wrote the lyrics for it. He's a lyricist that I've worked with for a long time, and I love working with lyricists because they have the ability to put together a great story that's going to make me write a song the likes of which I've never written. Like, the musical side of it just turns out so different than if I'm writing both lyrics and music. And so this album that we put out this year, we started breaking ground on it probably in 2019, 2020, and it's finally out. So without any further delay, I want to introduce Z. Z, thank you for joining me. [00:01:14] Speaker A: I'm glad to be here. Thank you, Michael. [00:01:17] Speaker B: So we've worked together quite a while. And before that, I met you through my friend Rick Denzine. Right. And you were telling me earlier about why you started putting lyrics online and kind of your journey as a lyricist. [00:01:32] Speaker A: My journey as a lyricist was when I was young, I was obsessed with musical theater and I used to break down songs. I used to listen to a song and see structurally how it was put together. And that was as somebody who liked crossword puzzles. It was very interesting to see. To look at it in that way. And I'd always wanted to write, but I never really had the opportunity. So I've acted for years. And somewhere along the line, in my 30s, I said, you know, I want to try something else. Let me see if. Let me try writing lyrics, because I never tried. I spent a long time writing some secret stuff that you've never seen and probably never will. I stretch my muscles way beyond where they needed to be stretched. But I learned a lot. And then I got on a website called the Muse's Muse, and that was sort of a come one, come all for songwriters. It doesn't exist anymore. It's morphed into a sort of a junior version of the site by people who used to be there. But it was a great site to meet and gather up with people and to try things. So I started posting lyrics which got good response, and I started experimenting. This particular lyric, Rumpelstiltskin came out of a joke. When it came out, there was a forum for lyricists on this particular site. And there would be one thread which was nothing, but somebody post a song title, and then somebody else. Anybody could run up and write four to six lines on it, and then they'd post a title, and then that would go on and on like that. It would just go on 247 with people challenging each other. And one morning I logged on, and somebody had posted the title, rumpelstiltskin dead at 95. And it had been sitting there for hours and hours and hours. Nobody knew how to write it. So I wanted to find out what it is. So I went back and I said, okay, what's the story? Rumpelstiltskin. We had. The woodcutter goes into the woods, he slays the king's deer, and the king captures him and is gonna put him to death. He says, hold on. My daughter can spin straw into gold. And the king says, well, that's cool. Bring her in. And of course, the daughter's all, you know, I don't know how to do this. How am I gonna do this? And then Rumpelstiltskin shows up and says, I'll spin your straw on the gold if I can have your firstborn male child. Your firstborn child for my own. No motivation given. And then, of course, he eventually marries the king, which I think is significant. Has a child, which is significant. And Rumpels Hilton shows up to collect, and he's foiled because she guesses his name. So I looked at that and said, okay, 40 years later, where is everybody? That child is now grown up. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:11] Speaker A: The woman who married the king is now the queen. Has been queen for 40 years and now. So what did that story mean to these people? And I got obsessed with the idea of this child growing up, learning from the villagers or whatever that this person wanted them and not never knowing why. Who was this guy? And I imagine the prince growing up in the court and feeling sad and lonely and isolated. And I don't want to do this. I don't want this to be my destiny. And I always joke to you that all my songs are about regret. So the idea is that he'd be. Now that Rumpelstiltskin has died, he'd be standing at the grave wondering what his life could have turned into. Okay, so. But what I wrote originally, again, I was writing very quickly, even before all the pieces started to come in. And how do you write something quickly on that? Well, it has to be something about straw into gold. That's the essence of the story. So he's dead. He's in a grave. And I thought that they packed his grave with straw, and. And they used his gold to pay for it. So that was. They packed his grave with straw using the last of his gold was, I think, the line that got me into the story. And then you make the choice. And we were talking about this. Are you gonna rhyme or aren't you gonna rhyme? And I said, okay, I'm gonna try to rhyme that first and third line. So what rhymes with gold? Sold. Eventually told story told tale told. That's a good line. I can do something with that. And then how do you rhyme straw? And you're going through all the lines. You. You hit upon jaw and it's like, oh, he's in the grave. And jaw always is. They're closing his. You know, they close his eyes, they close his jaw. And there came the chorus. They closed his. They closed his jaw. And then you have to get those other two syllables. So you think, what word is good? What word? And withered just said so much to me. That's. That's such an evocative word. They closed his withered jaw. His story finally told. They packed his grave with straw Bought with the last of his gold. And those lines anchored the whole thing. And from then on, you begin to build the story. And again, like I said, all my songs are about regret, and this one is explicitly about regret. That's the bridge, which is always my favorite part of the song. No one pays all their debts Everyone dies with several regrets. And it's one of my most economical and least word heavy bridges. And it says so much with just those handful of words. I didn't want to mess with that. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's beautiful. And, yeah, you know, one of the things that struck me about this song too is you had already recorded it at some point and you wanted a more relaxed setting of it. I believe the tempo was a little fast, possibly. [00:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I had somebody play it for me live and we, you know, it was a quick pick me up kind of thing, and it wasn't quite at the tempo I wanted. And this is one of the only songs where I knew enough about rudimentary chord progression to set it to say, you know, I could do that much. It's not interesting musically. It's adequate musically, but it fits it. But it serves the song. I mean, I'm not a musician. I know enough to talk to a musician about chords and measures and beats. So this is a song that's always felt very personal to me. There's something deeply buried in here, something deeply hidden about me and my father that, you know, is never explicitly stated. But this is one of the things that I've written where I can't read it. I can't talk about it too much without crying. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:52] Speaker A: You know, there's something very. There's something encoded in it. [00:07:56] Speaker B: Well, and that comes across in the performance. I mean, I got to do. Our project is unique in that, I think, because, first of all, who has a lyricist anymore? And I can say I have a lyricist, but. But I also write my own lyrics. But it's nice to, like, kind of feel like I have a lyricist I can work with if I want to get creative. And I'm just not sure what I want. I don't want to write anything. I just want to write music. I can. I can go find some lyrics. I can say, hey, Z, do you have any lyrics for me? And you'll send me a whole package. And. And that's what we did for this project. But number two, the way the song came together, you're very specific about what you like and you don't like. And that kind of pushes me when I'm building the textures to. To find exactly what you're looking for. [00:08:49] Speaker A: For. [00:08:49] Speaker B: And when we find that there's. There's a lot of magic there. So with the tempo, kind of the. The guitar and the cello, and just the simplicity of that. And you said rudimentary. I think it's beautiful. Like, I think the melody really just, you know, it sticks in your mind, and it has. It has good range. So it's. It's. It's not a hundred percent protection. Predictable. So for me, I love a melody that. That surprises you, yet you still feel at home with. So all that pulls at your heartstrings. So by the end of the song, I'm. I'm feeling that regret in a way that might be. That that is being expressed. You know, you. Somehow this does pull at your heartstrings and. And it's partially and probably mostly in your vocal delivery. [00:09:42] Speaker A: Well, I'm feeling it. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah. I mean, musically, maybe not interesting, but I always have a strong rhythmic sense. I very often come in and say, you know, even if I don't know what the notes are going to be, this is kind of how it needs to go. And with this one, you. The four lines of the verse. Well, it's a couplet and a line. A couplet, then a line and the rhythm, if you read it, is the coffin, as you'd guess, was small. It didn't take much wood at all, which is boring. But what I wanted to do with the rhythm vocally is have that little catch in the first line. The coffin, as you'd guess, was small. And then. Then the third line is. The tine is very much rhythm. The tiny body cleaned and simply clad. And I do that with each of the. Those couplets that stop and start kind of feel to it to break up the rhythm, which I think makes it a little more interesting. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think you're playing with space, right. You're breaking up rhythms. You're playing with space. There are a lot of words in the piece, but you don't feel like it. That's the other thing I like about this lyric. I feel like you're saying it's economical, but there's a lot there. [00:10:54] Speaker A: There's actually too many words. There's too many verses. Should be three verses. There are four. That middle is two verses long, because that's a big story. So I wanted to have a verse for the queen and a verse for the prince in addition to the opening and the closing at the graveside. So that whole middle section is a dialogue with the queen and the prince talking about rhythm and talking about creating space. The chorus starts out very rhythmically. They closed his withered jaw his story finally told they packed his grave with straw and then there's a slight change up, but with the last of his gold those extra couple words. And then the next line is a totally. Too many syllables for the line. They say all he wanted was a son while he was still alive. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:39] Speaker A: So it sort of dances for a moment, lands in a place you expect it to. You can feel it land. And then it hits the. You know. Rumpelstiltskin, dead at 95. [00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it starts at the end of the story. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Yes. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Which I like that, too. You know, that's something that, you know, I as a songwriter, sometimes try to be a little too linear. And so when I see something where you see the end of the story, and then, like. Then it unpacks. Well, what do we need to know about this? You know? [00:12:09] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:10] Speaker B: I like that. [00:12:10] Speaker A: You know, you have the prince. You have the. It starts out with the grave. Then you hear. The prince is sitting there. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:16] Speaker A: Then there's the chorus. And then you hear, go back a little bit, where the queen's telling the prince, I don't want you to go. And the prince says, I have To. I have to find out who this guy is. And the queen says, you. You have no idea what I went through with this guy. You have no idea what my life was. And then we go back a little further to the little joke about the carver not knowing how to spell the name and only putting the letter R there. Going full circle to the prince standing there and regretting, wondering what his life might have been. He cursed the man he might have been. He mourns the man he might have been and cursed the man he finally became. Which is. When I wrote this, which was my late 30s, early 40s. I was already at that fork in the road, kind of feeling like, did I do okay with my life? Did I make the right choices? [00:13:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:00] Speaker A: And do I like the person I am now? And there are times when you don't. You. There are always times. Everyone goes to a point where they. They say to themselves, I. I think I screwed up my life. I'm a terrible person. I've made the wrong choices. Everyone goes through that. [00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:14] Speaker A: At some point. And that's really what the song is about. It's that moment when you're saying, you know, I could have gone another way. You know, maybe, you know, I cursed the man I became and mourned the man I could have been. And you get over it, and you will go into, you know, another section of your life. You're saying, I'm great. This is great. I'm on the path to glory. [00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah. It's the end. It's. You kind of. It's okay to change your opinion about yourself. I think it's okay. [00:13:40] Speaker A: I think so. And I think everyone does. Goes through periods of their life when they're down on themselves and hopefully periods of their life when they're up. So this is just a recognition of those dark times that we come into when things just feel all wrong. [00:13:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can go back to, you know, relationship transitions and that whole mess, and usually I'm in a. There's a turmoil in there, and you feel, you know, all the mistakes you made and the things you could have done better, and you're like, I'm not a. You might feel like you're not a good person if you're on the one end of it, whatever it is. But, yeah, things do get better. Time kind of. [00:14:23] Speaker A: There's a song I wrote, which I don't think you've heard, called Daphne and Winter, which is also very musically similar to this, because my musical imagination is not great. But lyrically, it's about The Daphne myth. And you know, I like writing about famous stories and finding a modern take on them. Daphne was a river nymph, for Father was the river God. She was being pursued by the God Apollo for all the reasons that God wanted to get their hands on a nymph. And she didn't want to give up her, you know, chastity, her virginity. And she called out for help and at the last minute, her father turns her into a tree, a laurel tree. And the story ends with her becoming a tree. And then that's a happy ending. And her branches are become crowns for people, the laurel wreath, et cetera, et cetera. But. And again, this is another case with it. The title came to me and I had to figure out what to do with it. What was it like for her in the winter when it's. She's standing all by herself and it's cold and it's. There's nobody around. And then she goes through another spring and everyone's around and everyone's happy and loving everyone. And then there's another winter. What is it like 10 years later to stand there in the winter? [00:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:28] Speaker A: And that's another song about regretting your choices. And, you know, every. Every spring she sees all the people losing their virginity under her tree. You know, all the people in love and. And copulating and feeling joy, which she will never feel. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:47] Speaker A: And then in the winter she's alone. So that becomes another regret song. [00:15:53] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. And so I guess that theme does. [00:15:58] Speaker A: It runs all the way through if I'm left to my own devices. Unless I write something like Me and My Purple Monkey, where it says all about joy and momentary joy and joy in the moment. But just. I realized we're running over your time. [00:16:09] Speaker B: Here, but it's okay. You know, I. I think we talked about a lot of really important parts of Rumpelstiltskin dead at 95. It's on the new album Less Hospitable Terrain by Z. Malls and Michael G. Ronstadt. And it's got a lot of really interesting songs and somehow between mostly your lyric foundations. [00:16:33] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:34] Speaker B: With two of my contributions and a few songs we grabbed of co writes that were just. [00:16:40] Speaker A: We wrote six together on this. [00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Thematically it seems to make sense. We were talking about, you know, if you're kind of approaching less hospitable terrain, it kind of. You'll learn a lot from it. But it can be a little bit unnerving to take that first step. And I feel like even my Songs that you said, hey, yeah, we can definitely do Tens of Dollars or Seem. [00:17:09] Speaker A: So Sweet, which is a Journey song. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:11] Speaker A: Seems so Sweet is about crossing into difficult emotional territory. Like, these are two people who are having trouble communicating, and it's that fear of stepping into that unknown space where you have to be a little more vulnerable. Yeah. [00:17:23] Speaker B: And it came from that exact thing. It wasn't as extreme as the song made it, but it felt that way. It was a strong moment. And it was actually before. Came from a short conversation that wasn't that intense, but kind of shook me a little bit before I got married. [00:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:42] Speaker B: And it was. It was. It was good. I learned a lot from it. And. But it's not autobiographical in any sense. It became its own abstract. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Sometimes the terrain is a lot more hospitable once you're in it. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So. So this album, I think, will. Will tickle the ears of our listeners. You know, as always, I am thankful for the Nathan's and Roncast family who pays attention to the music that Aaron Nathans and I do. But we also like to feature other people's music. And Z is truly a master at his craft. And we hope you enjoy the song Rumpelstiltskin Dead at 95 Written by Z Malls and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you for listening. [00:18:47] Speaker C: The coffin, as you'd guess, was small. It didn't take much wood at all. The tiny body cleaned and simply clad. At the grave site stood the prince with unfamiliar diffidence to pay respects to the father he never had. They closed his withered jaw, his story finally told. They packed his grave with straw bought with the last of his gold. They say all he wanted was a son while he was still alive. Rumpelstilts scared dead at 95. The Queen told the prince not to go. The prince said I had to know who was this man who wanted me. [00:19:56] Speaker A: As a child. [00:20:00] Speaker C: I would have learned a useful trade not live this palace promenade with chaperones and guards who never smiled. The queen, she turned, turned to face the wall Said you don't understand at all. I was so young and had no place to turn. I took advantage of his spell, I told the lies I had to tell. You've no idea what life will make you learn. They closed his withered jaw, his story finally told. They packed his grave with straw bought with the last of his gold. And they say all he wanted was a son while he was still alive. Rumple still scared dead at 95. But no one pays all their debts and everyone dies with several regrets the dwarf and the queen and everyone in between. The letter R was on the tomb the carver said there wasn't room and no one knew just how to spell his name the prince looked on his would be kin he mourned the man he might have been and cursed the man he finally became they closed his withered jaw his story finally told they packed his grave with straw Bought with the last of his gold and they say all he wanted was a son While he was still alive Rumpelstill scum. [00:22:37] Speaker A: Dead. [00:22:42] Speaker C: Dead at 95. [00:23:02] Speaker A: Sam.