“Step by Step”
A song written by Jesse Winchester in 1976
11 Sep 2024 · 6 min read
I’ve been a Jesse Winchester fan ever since I slipped his first album onto my turntable in my dorm room back in Ann Arbor, but somehow I don’t think I’d paid much attention to this gem until I stumbled across it yesterday.
This fits neatly into Winchester’s small but accomplished set of songs about god and religion — songs like “Quiet About It” and “Isn’t That So?”.
One of the things I love about this group of Winchester songs is that he displays obvious familiarity with, and even sympathy for, the Christian tradition, but manages to bring an entirely fresh approach to his questioning of these sacred topics.
This song seems to start with the picture painted by the spiritual “When The Saints Go Marching In,” and then picks up from there.
Give a listen to the Winchester recording, then stroll with me through the lyrics.
Step by step,
All the happy Saints go marching in.
These first two lines set the scene for us, and provide some linkage to the traditional spiritual.
And if those Saints step out of line,
They’ll have to start again.
Now Winchester begins to introduce a sly questioning of what might happen to a saint who slips from grace before making it to heaven. Notice how he’s now introducing some imagery and notions probably more part of contemporary life than anything found in the Bible — things like waiting in line, stepping out of line, and being told to go to the back of the line.
Cause Jacob’s golden ladder
Get’s slippery at the top.
Again Winchester is artfully (and comically) mixing authentic Biblical references with modern imagery: Jacob’s ladder is a straight lift from the book of Genesis, but the image of it getting slippery at the top seems taken from a slapstick comedy.
And many a happy-go-lucky saint
Has made that long long drop.
And with these final two lines from this first verse, Winchester completes this initial scene. His tone here is pitch-perfect. If one wants to read this as a sad contemporary recounting of our tendency to slip from God’s grace, then this is perfectly defensible. At the same time, the image of “that long long drop” strikes me as a bit cartoonish, bringing up memories of Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner over a cliff, and then comically plunging to his destruction.
And now comes the chorus, which provides a sort of reaction shot from Winchester to the scene we’ve just witnessed.
If I’m late, don’t wait,
Go on without me —
I may tarry awhile.
Here Winchester makes his decision clear. He’s not in any hurry to climb that ladder, even though he’s happy to send his companions along in their ascent. I especially like his use of the refined and somewhat dated word “tarry,” with its intentionally indefinite specification of how long the singer might linger before joining his companions.
And why is Winchester choosing to fall behind?
Cause I need to know,
Before I go…
How come the Devil smiles.
Here, in only three lines, Winchester manages to evoke a tension central to the Christian Bible, this idea of the forbidden fruit growing on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so, rather than ascending to heaven with the happy-go-lucky (and perhaps blissfully ignorant) saints, he stays behind in pursuit of forbidden knowledge.
And now Winchester continues his depiction of heavenly glory with a second verse.
Free from care, free from sin,
The Saints are trooping in.
The children play all around the throne,
Innocent of sin.
A trillion voices sing the name
The mortal may not know.
And Heaven’s walls are too high to hear
The trouble down below.
Here Winchester paints a picture of heaven filled with the ascendant souls, now completely removed from earthly cares, and absorbed in their worship of the supreme deity. But again some contemporary phrases are mixed in, to suggest a different perspective, with the saints “trooping in,” and a “trillion” voices singing. But then he finishes the scene by pointing out there is still plenty of trouble down on earth, where the singer still resides, and the studied avoidance of these earthly cares now seems to be something less than saintly. The unasked but clearly implied question might be: what’s the use of these saints if they can’t lend a hand with what’s going on down on Earth?
And now we have the chorus repeated.
If I’m late, don’t wait,
Go on without me —
I may tarry awhile.
Cause I need to know,
Before I go…
How come the Devil smiles.
And now let me talk a bit about the music, which is extraordinary. The song unfolds to a heavy marching beat, suggestive of the New Orleans roots of the song “The Saints Go Marching In.” But instead of Louis Armstrong blowing his jubilation through his trumpet, we have Paul Butterfield blowing the blues on his harmonica, alternately suggesting the tortured screams of those trapped in the trouble down below, and then the sweet visage of the devil’s smile.
And there we have it. The entire track clocks in at just under three minutes.
One can certainly view the song as a serious warning about avoiding the temptations of the devil.
But for me it’s a more complex picture that Winchester paints. He seems to be suggesting that these sunday school depictions of the saints marching up to heaven are in fact cartoonish, and too simplistic to be taken seriously — as, perhaps, are the traditional sunday school notions of good and evil. And that perhaps unraveling the mystery of the devil’s smile — and wrestling with those troubles down below — are more ambitious and worthy tasks than trying to trod a path that stays as far away from sin as possible.
Winchester’s entire body of work suggests that he was more interested in the complex problems faced by us humans down here on earth than he was in gaining quick entry into heaven.
And it may help us to know that Winchester chose to flee to Canada rather than fight in the VietNam war, and was only able to return to his native land once Carter granted pardons in 1977 to all of those who made similar decisions during that conflict. Did the devil smile to see Winchester evade his military duty? Or would he have smiled to see Winchester killing North Vietnamese as part of the US military effort in that part of the world? Such complex moral judgments are part and parcel of life on Earth, but don’t seem to enter into any simplistic pictures of the saints trooping up Jacob’s ladder.
Winchester tarried down here long enough for me to see him perform a masterful solo set at The Triple Door here in Seattle a few years ago, and I’ll be forever grateful for that chance to have seen him in person before he left us.
As for where he is now…?
I’ll be content to envision him occupying a suite somewhere close by Leonard Cohen’s in the Tower of Song.
He’s certainly earned a spot there.