I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails
Across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Oh, Amelia,
It was just a false alarm
The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons
If it gets through to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture postcard charms
Oh, Amelia,
It was just a false alarm
People’ll tell you where they’ve gone
They’ll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself
You never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Oh, Amelia,
It was just a false alarm
I wish that he was here tonight
It’s so hard to obey
His sad request of me
To kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia
It was just a false alarm
A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea
Like me, she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful, foolish arms
Oh, Amelia,
It was just a false alarm
Maybe I’ve never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I’ve spent my whole life
In clouds at icy altitudes
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Oh, Amelia,
It was just a false alarm
I pulled into the Cactus Tree motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows
Of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia,
Dreams, and false alarms
Reviews
I listened to your Amelia cover several times when you first released it. It’s one that brings me to tears and I don’t consciously know why. I think it’s how you totally made it your own while also totally honouring what Joni had given you to work with. I heard things I hadn’t heard in the song before. I so hope she’s had a listen! —Christopher H.
A brilliant choice of songs…The way you made it yours, with all the subtle twists & turns that Miss Joni always provides. You move through & around them with the greatest of ease. And ultimately, as you know, DO I BELIEVE THIS SONG? is always the question. Answer: YES. Wonderful Doug. Keep stretching this way. It is exhilarating… —David B.
You have mined new feeling from this amazing song Doug and your arrangement was so beautiful. —Ryan H.
Wonderful…dreamlike. —Carol L. H.
I love the song, the singer, the creator, the aviator, and the banyan. —BJ L.
It takes a measure of bravery to sing one of her songs, Doug. Well done!! —Randy C.
It was superb and listening to your voice and the interpretation therewith – with your voice – was delightful. No worries a about being a man singing it….: – from 2 songs of Joni’s, are the words: “and humans are hungry for worlds they can’t share …as well as – “i see something of myself in everyone”… The accompaniment is also outstanding- did you do it!!? Anyway it would be a compliment to Joni I’m quite sure. Thank you! —Jude P. O.
Love the gender bender aspect…Joni has dressed up as a man on occasion and I think sometimes the interpretations by men of her songs can be enlightening… —Gerry O.
I’ve been immersed in THAT SONG! What a compelling treatment. I love the breadth of your arrangement and all of the little interesting surprises that tickle my ear. —Willard S.
I love it. Got chills and tears. Really masterfully done. —Regg U. G.
This is absolutely amazing! So much emotion!. Gives me chills. —Michelle W.
I absolutely loved it. You have a beautiful voice and yes, you’ve done it such Justice….the accompaniment, just lovely. [J.] and I want to come hear you play it sometime… Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful song beautifully sung. —Marianne R.
brought me to tears….thank you —Pam C.
2025 Notes
Remixed and remastered for inclusion in the Everything I Am album in 2025. See below for story, and why the story has only deepened after moving to Hawaiʻi.
2021 Notes
To keep my musical chi stirred up this year, I decided to do some cover songs from my most important musical influences. Joni Mitchell is in the top three.
I occasionally did a Joni song in my own concerts, usually “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” often in a coffee house setting. But I decided to record “Amelia” (from Joni’s 1976 album, Hejira), because I think it’s my favorite overall, I relate to it more than any other, and also—well, let’s just face it. It’s a perfect song!
When I was traveling around performing my own songs of life and love, I was in the middle of an iconic struggle: trying to reconcile my faith and my sexuality. It was my own hejira I suppose, during which I experienced some of the lowest ebbs and highest flows of my life. And I don’t know what I would have done without Joni’s songs. One small room I remember in particular, where I hung my hat for some six weeks during an extended Minnesota tour, and where I listened to her live album, Miles of Aisles, over and over. And over.
I loved “Amelia” from the first time I heard it, not long after Hejira was released, and I assure you, this is one Midwestern Baptist gay boy who could relate to it in all its particulars. He’d always admired its romantic and noble heroine as well as its author. And he certainly knew a lot about dreams of flying, false alarms and crashes.
To me, Joni’s songs were sacred. Though some of my audience might have thought it sacrilegious to speak of her in this way, it was absolutely true. Her lyrics were a lifeline. They made me feel—made me know—that I wasn’t alone in the world. Her tales of woe didn’t deepen my despair, they reassured me that other humans had traveled this way before, and that God was still with me. Her bejeweled, poetic lines were a perfection of sorrow, of unrequited love, of the human condition, of the search for meaning—and also of life and love.
Forty years later, when I moved to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi with my husband, David, I discovered another connection with Amelia when I learned how greatly Hawaiʻi had figured in Earhart’s accomplishments, and that she had actually planted a Banyan tree here in Hilo in 1935. The tree is gigantic as of 2021, and is a sort of touchstone—touchtree, I guess!—for me now. I get a wonderful feeling whenever we drive by it, which is often.
So here it is, my version of “Amelia,” dedicated to the wonderful Joni Mitchell Facebook group I belong to (whose 26K+ members are truly remarkable in the breadth of their knowledge and devotion), and to all of life’s well traveled pilgrims.
Music Notes
I became familiar with chiastic structure through some Bible studies a few years ago. It’s a literary device found in ancient writings, a schemata where the same ideas are presented forward, and then backward, all focusing on the center. “Amelia” has seven verses, and the more I thought about it, and worked on it, and sang it, it suddenly dawned on me that verse 4 is the crux, the fulcrum, the heart of the song. Verses 1–3 seem to lead up to it, and verses 5–7 lead away. Take the first and last verses, for instance. They both include desert scenes, jet planes, and geometry—geometry looked up to in verse 1, and looked down on in verse 7. I haven’t tested the other verses against this pattern yet…
But all amateur literary criticism aside, it’s simply one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I’ve always loved Joni’s “chords of inquiry,” and this song’s constant motion from one key center to another builds the entire song on a restless foundation.
I had a great time developing the piano part, and I was going to keep the arrangement just piano and vocal, but that plan’s now moot. I just couldn’t do it: it evokes such a cinematic scene in my head. (The naughtier ones among you may be thinking: “And what else is new?”) Not that cinematic has to be complicated, mind you. But in the end, I still tried to keep the focus on the piano, deciding to play off of that, emphasizing some of its aspects with strings, and other solo instruments, too.
As I said in my Joni Mitchell Facebook Group share post, I invited my good friend and “Joni soulmate,” Ann Doyle—who is a wonderful singer-songwriter I’ve collaborated with on several occasions—to act as my critic on this. She and I bonded over Joni’s Pine Knob appearance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on May 31, 2000.
I felt some trepidation sharing this with that group of Joni-philes—partly because I may be the first man ever to cover the song, and partly because I knew others from the group undoubtedly felt as deep a connection with it as I did. So I passed it by Ann first, and she reassured me. Dear listeners, I hope you take this as the tribute I mean it to be, to thank Joni for being such an important and trusted confidante on my own hejira so many years ago.
Cover photo, Amelia Earhart, 1937; New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Lonnie’s Notes
(These notes are from my wonderful friend, Lonnie, and I just wanted to share them with you as a bonus. They sure were a bonus for me!)
I went to your link and heard “Amelia.” OMG. First of all, I can’t believe it, but I’d never heard that song before. How is that possible? Joe knew it because he used to play it on his college radio show in Albany asa DJ — he was in school when the album came out, and radio stations were playing albums big time then. What kind of Joni fan am I???? So after I heard your version a couple of times, I went to Joni’s on YouTube.
But secondly, I’m glad I heard you first. I was completely taken by it, and I honestly like it better. I know you’re not looking for that kind of response, but there it is. But for many reasons, I like your cover better. Part of it is that I can understand your words better. Your piano playing is excellent, of course. And I do like her guitar work on her original very, very much.
But it’s an overall different experience. I feel like her version sort of touches the sky, and your version goes deep down into the soul. In particular, the way you sing the name “Amelia” — every time it breaks my heart. When Joni sings it, I feel differently — like it’s part of the whole driving through the desert experience, one I’ve had myself. When you sing the name, I hurt and rejoice in the hurt at the same time. SO, so beautiful. As is hers. But they are very different experiences for me.
I have a couple more comments:
1. The thing about a man covering this song — women have been covering men’s songs for forever. Really. I certainly did. We didn’t worry too much about it. I did change pronouns occasionally, but I probably shouldn’t have. Besides, you are you, so do what you want.
2. The cover [photo] you made, which I love — has anyone told you there’s a facial resemblance between you and Amelia in that photo that looks like you’re related? It gave me pause right away. Like you inhabited her persona for this.
3. And now I’m a bad English teacher. Her poetry is so precise, so interesting, so different, as usual, and for me, hearing this was like finding a long-lost manuscript of a writer I love. I wish I could come up w/imagery like hers. I wish I could be a fraction of the poet she is. HOWEVER. I have no idea, no matter how hard I try, what “it’s a false alarm” means or could mean. You sing it like it means something to you. But I don’t understand it. Oi
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