The Accordion in the Attic – Song Description
“I feel a little closer every time I play it good.” He never actually met the grandfather he’s trying to feel closer to in this song, and I think that absence is the real subject of it, more than the instrument itself. Most songs about family instruments are really about continuity between two people who knew each other. This one is about something stranger — the possibility of grieving, and even loving, someone you only ever encountered secondhand, through an object and other people’s memory of them, rather than through any memory of your own. He takes the accordion up badly at first, with no real skill and no direct instruction from the man who played it well, purely to feel some kind of proximity to a life he arrived just too late for. I don’t think the song claims the closeness he’s chasing is exactly the same as the real thing would have been. It just suggests that an inherited, secondhand kind of connection is still a real kind, worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as a poor substitute.
Title -THE ACCORDION IN THE ATTIC
Verse 1
I was helping clear the attic
On a rainy afternoon
Boxes filled with faded photographs
And memories of June
There were letters tied with ribbon
And a clock that would not tick
Then I found an old accordion
Covered up and thick with dust
Chorus
The accordion in the attic
Silent through the passing years
Waiting in the shadows
While the seasons disappeared
But when I drew the bellows open
And heard that first old chord
A lifetime came alive again
Across the attic floor
Verse 2
I asked my mother whose it was
She smiled and looked away
“That belonged to your grandfather
Back in his younger days”
“He played at every wedding
Every dance and harvest ball
There wasn’t a hall in County Clare
That didn’t know his call”
Chorus
The accordion in the attic
Silent through the passing years
Waiting in the shadows
While the seasons disappeared
But when I drew the bellows open
And heard that first old chord
A lifetime came alive again
Across the attic floor
Verse 3
They said he’d met my grandmother
One summer long ago
Playing reels and jigs together
At a dance beside the shore
And every tune he ever played
Could fill a room with light
Till people danced till morning
On a warm September night
Bridge
So carefully I picked it up
And brushed the dust away
The leather creaked a little
As though it had something to say
And somewhere in that attic
Between the then and now
I swear I heard old laughter
Coming from the bellows somehow
Chorus
The accordion in the attic
Silent through the passing years
Waiting in the shadows
While the seasons disappeared
But when I drew the bellows open
And heard that first old chord
A lifetime came alive again
Across the attic floor
Verse 4
Now sometimes on an evening
When the house has settled down
I take out that old accordion
And let the music sound
And though I’ve never met him
The way I wish I could
I feel a little closer
Every time I play it good
Final Chorus
The accordion in the attic
No longer lost in time
Singing songs of yesterday
In every note and line
And when I draw the bellows open
I hear the years once more
And watch old memories dancing
Across the attic floor
Outro
An old accordion
A dusty wooden case
A grandfather’s forgotten songs
And a family finding its place
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty