Intro to I Don’t Know Where I Stand Songtext
von Joni Mitchell

Sometimes people ask me if I have any-, any musical background
And I just wanna tell you tonight that-, that I have a little bit of music in my family tree
So to speak
On my mother′s side there was my-, my grandmother who came out from Scotland
To pioneer Saskatchewan, and that was when the-, before the Mounties were even royal
It was sort of North-, Northwest-ish
And she didn't know it at the time but she was a frustrated Rock and Roll organist all that time
I know that now but I haven′t had the heart to really break it to her
But, ah, she got out there and found that the audiences were few and far between
There was her brother and, and the other man which she married

And, ah, few Indians who just couldn't get behind the kind of music that she liked to play
She played the church organ for a while in a presbyterian church in Saskatchewan
And-, and, ah, as a result, every time that she used to get upset, she'd come home
And she′d play the organ at home in a minor key
So my mother grew up not being able to stand anything that had a minor key in it anywhere
And, ah, that was my musical heritage on that side of the family


Then on the other side of the family, there was my grandfather who made violines
And he didn′t played them but he made them
And, ah, my father said one day, well he would like to be a musician and he had five dollars
And times were hard then and five dollars didn't buy very much of an instrument
So he went into a pawn shop and he said, "I would like to buy an instrument for five dollars"
And they gave him a trumpet, so my father became a trumpet player
And, ah, for a while, he was the leader of the Muschure Saskatchewan Mosta Military
Marching band, I am sure you have heard of that

That was, well, just for a short time and then we moved to North Battleford
Where he became the leader of the North Battleford Saskatchewan Kinsman Band
And, uh, he was leader there for a while until Norman Lehman came to town
And Norman Lehman grew better mustaches than my father
And this John Philip Sousa thing was all important at the time and my fathers
Came in all kind of blond and show on parade, you know
So he was demoted to second trumpet and that ended his musical career pretty suddenly
Because he developed a thing called "rusty lip" which means that if you don′t play
The trumpet for a long, you'll really play terribly and you′ll apologize a lot

So I wrote this next song with the idea that I'd write a-, a little trumpet solo into the
Middle of it to give me father some incentive to take up the trumpet again
As it turned out, it didn′t really give him any incentive at all, so I was stuck with this
Silly trumpet solo in the middle of the song but I try to do it best I can without a trumpet

That whole introduction is in form of an apology for my trumpet solo
And you'll hear it and know why