The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn’t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad. — from Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

‘Little Bit of Rain,’ by the David Nance Group, is a scream of raw emotion, totally timeless, a Dust Bowl farmer standing in a fallow field, the dawn dampened by gray dirt, looking back at days when there was plenty of sunshine to yield the wheat and just enough rain to keep it watered.

With ‘Little Bit of Rain,’ David Nance takes up the Fred Neil folk classic and strips away every sliver of half-smiled wistfulness to leave nothing but the pain, the pain that sets in with the knowledge that you can never remember the good times and forget the bad because those times were the same. The song’s re-imagining moves the breakup — of people or of soil and farmer — from Fred Neil’s future (If I should leave you) into a past that is too achingly recent, be it five months or five decades ago, to be understood as anything but hurt.

And if you look back
Try to remember all the good times
Warm days filled with sunshine
And just a little bit of rain

And if I look back
I’ll try to forget all the bad times
All those sad and lonely blue times
‘Cause it’s all just a little bit of rain

‘Little Bit of Rain’ is Heartland Music, plowing a furrow of work, suffering, and redemption from the Mississippi Delta to Memphis, then due west to Oklahoma City before turning north and sending the blade through the muck that was beneath the Western Interior Seaway in halcyon Cretaceous days, through Wichita and Omaha and whatever lies beyond Iowa. This is what Weld-era Neil Young and Crazy Horse wish they could have been on their best night.

Listen as the right guitar plays a beautiful, understated accompaniment, filling a quiet space of sadness in the lee of the left guitar’s gale. And wait for the final ninety seconds, when the guitars remind us why God invented electricity as the bass and drums keep the wheels turning on the chert-strewn road between the bar ditches.

The David Nance Group comprises Sarah Bohling (bass, vocals), Kevin Donahue (drums), David Nance (left guitar, vocals), and Jim Schroeder (right guitar). ‘Little Bit of Rain’ appears on their new album, WFMU 11/6/18, a live set recorded during Matt Warwick’s Garbage Time on New Jersey’s WFMU. Today’s track is our second review of the David Nance Group’s ‘Little Bit of Rain.’ We previously featured the version that appears on Catharsis Lottery: Live 2018​-​2019, recorded in Adelaide before a talkative audience.

The music of David Nance and the David Nance Group is available on Bandcamp, Spotify (with separate pages for David Nance and the David Nance Group), and Apple Music (also with separate pages for David and the Group). And be sure to follow David Nance on Facebook and Instagram.