Arms of Plenty

Daniel Thomas

THE SWOON wrote Arms of Plenty in 1990 while living and rehearsing in the Minneapolis house, not long after our keyboard player had left the band. It represents a lost era of THE SWOON; it’s just one of many never-recorded songs that percolated up from the explosion of creativity and thick clouds of cigarette smoke that choked the air at 1040 22^nd Ave SE.

The lyrics allude to Mary the Mother of Jesus and the story of the water-to-wine in John 2. Here’s how it went down: Mary and Jesus go to a wedding in the Galilean village of Cana. The wedding guests drink more wine than the hosts anticipated. Mary asks Jesus to do something about it because the prophets predict an abundance of wine when the day of Messiah comes. She believes her son must be him, so he should be able to help out. He replies, “My day has not yet come.” Then he turns the water to wine anyway—a foretaste of the coming kingdom. “Soon, soon my day will come. Mother your desire will be done.”

The tune had a bouncy guitar riff and an optimistic pop vibe that set it apart from a lot of the moodier stuff we had done before. It made it onto the set list for our live shows that year, but it never made it to the studio. I thought it was lost forever. In 2022, I asked Troy Baartman and the Dacey’s if they remembered the music. They didn’t. I could scarcely remember the melody myself.

Then a miracle happened. A Cottonwood native named Tony apparently has in his possession a cassette tape of a SWOON rehearsal from 1990. It contains a collection of songs we were putting together for a studio project that never panned out, and it included Arms of Plenty. He gave the audio to Troy Baartman, and Troy sent me an MP3 of the missing song.

I sent the recording off to the other Troy in my life, the blind cantor and musical genius, Troy Mitchell. I asked Mitchell to recreate the song, but I wanted him to use the 1990 cassette version as a control track, beat for beat, note for note, matching the rhythm, the rattle, the rock, and the roll for Austin’s riffs and chops, Baartman’s bassline, Emmett’s drums and cymbals. Then I asked him to add rhythm guitar, keyboards, and piano as we would have done in 1990 had we ever had the opportunity to bring the song to studio. All of this he dutifully did, but to replicate Austin’s elaborate guitar riff, he recruited a ringer from the synagogue, Daniel Morales, to swing the axe. Overtop all that, I recorded a fresh vocal track for the first new recording from THE SWOON in 33 years. You can hear the original audio of the cassette at the beginning of the track and again at the beginning of the bridge.

The song has sentimental value to me. As I said, it’s a song about John 2 and the Virgin Mary, but, truth be told, I had in mind a specific girl who used to be around the Minneapolis house in those days. It seemed to me that she embodied the purity, mystery, grace, favor, and faith of the holy mother. It appeared to me that a spiritual light shone about her and that angels attended her. She was out of my league, but she married me anyway. In April 1991, I printed the lyrics inside our wedding program.

There is a wedding, and the feasting’s begun. There will be dancing by the drums. In the arms of plenty each child will be held. Mother your desire will be done. Just as the Jordan magically runs, Spilling out it’s grace for everyone, So will soul peace spill out on all man. Mother your desire will be done. Soon, my day will come; Mother your desire will be done. Sweet wine from water like words from the tongue, Each father’s daughter with each mother’s son. Gather together all things in one. Mother your desire will be done. Soon, my day will come; Mother your desire will be done. She shines softly, and her radiance is warm. Miracles are commonplace around her angels swarm. She shines softly, and her radiance is warm. Miracles are commonplace around her angels swarm. Soon, my day will come. Mother your desire will be done

Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay