Welcome to The Desk in the Lantern Room. Today, we are looking at some fiction that rolled off the Typewriter. It has an accompanying recording, so make sure to give that a spin while you read.
Today is my 40th birthday. It is also the release day of a song I wrote and am immensely proud of. It’s a story song (my favorite kind of song) and takes place in February of 1986. So I guess the kids in this story would be more than 40 years old if they hadn’t…well, you’ll find out. While Jack Pine (the band) isn’t active at this point, I’m thankful to have this and other recordings as evidence of what we built together.
As is usual for this sort of post, I’ll add annotations to the lyrics that lead to interesting details about their creation, or even just my current reaction to them. Annotation-heavy articles are always easier to read in-browser or in-app, though, so I encourage you to read it in one of those places, rather than your email. Before we get into it, here are a few links to where you can go listen to it:
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on YouTube
The Background
There is a fair amount of history behind this story-song that is worth telling on its own without burying it in annotations.
Back in 2005, I was working at Coldstone Creamery and had larger forearms. One of my co-workers was playing a mix over the PA, and a particularly haunting song caught my ear. I asked what it was. “Eli the Barrow Boy” by The Decemberists was the answer. Back then, it wasn’t nearly as easy to get into new music or listen to anything you wanted on a whim (without pirating), so into my brain files, that song went.
Several years later, I discovered The Decemberists’ album “The King is Dead” and loved it. Somewhere around the same time, I was in a local band and went to my then-bass player, John Paul’s, house to copy a whole bunch of his CDs to my iMac. Among the bunch were several more Decemberists albums, including “Picaresque”, which contained “Eli the Barrow Boy”. Finally, I had found it, and I loved it just as much as I thought I would. A love affair was born that day, and I’ve been a major fan of everything The Decemberists and Colin Meloy have done since then—he even touched my hand a few years ago. (I’m aware we aren’t friends and he doesn’t know who I am, by the way.)
“Eli the Barrow Boy” follows a young boy, pushing his barrow around “the old town” to sell his coal and marigolds and save enough money to afford a fine robe for his love, made of gold and silk Arabian thread. Alas, she is dead and gone and buried in a pine grove, but still he pushes his barrow all the day. Unfortunately, the poor boy drowns in the nearby river, but still, when the moon is out with his pushcart, he calls down the day.
I bring this up because from the point that I envisioned a ghostly child pushing his barrow around in the moonlight, I knew I wanted to write my own ghost child song.
Fast forward to February of 2018. I pulled into the driveway of our old tiny house, saw my son’s swing blowing around in the winter wind, and thought, “What if it’s not the wind making that thing go? What if it’s a ghost child?” and suddenly I had it. I ran inside, grabbed my guitar, and started to noodle. Ideas began to come right away, and I knew I was onto something. I knew if I let it wait for another day, it would never come out right. I also knew that doing this on the couch in our 900-square-foot house with my wife and sons listening was not going to work. So I packed up my guitar, laptop, and microphone and headed to my father-in-law’s empty house across town.
The one he was found dead in a mere three months prior.
That’s morbid, I know, but it’s part of the story. To be honest, I was scared to go into that house alone that night—you don’t shake off the vision of finding someone that way very easily. Also, it was nighttime. Dark.
In I went, and began turning on lights. I made my rounds through every room, including the basement, just to make sure I was truly alone—don’t ask me why—then sat down on the couch and got to work. I don’t know that the fear ever left me during that writing session, but I do know that I’m not sure I could have written this song without it.
There’s one more thing to know before we get to the lyrics: I’ve never written a song so fast. I’ve written precious few songs (and “Grey” is the only one that is recorded and similarly annotated HERE), but all of them were written very differently, and the majority took a long time. This one poured right out of me in one go—including some of the guitar/synth melodies—and was 95% finished in that moment. The only thing that needed to be added was the rest of the band.
So while I was terrified to be alone in that house that night in February 2018, I’m thankful I had a place to go to bring this story into the world. But like many things that have come about since that time, I’m sad that Dad isn’t here to see any of the beauty he enabled.
Whew, I didn’t expect to get that sentimental today, but here we are, and it’s all true. It’s also true that while the subject matter of this song is dark, the music is not, and neither will be the annotations. Deep breath…alright, let’s go.
“February Ghosts” - Annotated
Verse 1
Here we swing, watching over our old school playground
Where we used to run around
Memories of tag, and climbing the monkey bars with the new kid’s bag1
Pre-Chorus
February ghosts, swung on the cool breeze2
Verse 2
It was the winter of ‘863
He was just a middle-aged man with a bone to pick4
Drunk behind the wheel of his Taurus,5 he was headed directly towards us
Pre-Chorus
February ghosts, born on the cruel breeze6
Chorus
Here we swing, side by side, reminiscing about7
How it feels to be alive
Oh, what a feeling, you gave chase with playful screaming8
Oh, what I’d give to be alive9
Musical Break 110
Verse 3
Late in the day, when they found us, side by side
Hand in hand on the edge of the second bend
February ghosts had already made their way back to the old school playground
And side by side, they swung11
Chorus
Here we swing, side by side, reminiscing about
How it feels to be alive
Oh, what a feeling, when our chests still lifted with breathing12
Oh, what I’d give to be alive
Musical Break 213
Bridge
And every February, on the eve of the crime
You can find us swinging, locked in time
Reliving memories
And holding hands,14 yes, we’re holding hands15
Chorus
Here we swing, side by side, reminiscing about16
How it feels to be alive
Oh, what a feeling, when the cold wind left us shivering17
Oh, what I’d give to have survived18
Musical Break 319
That’s what kids do, right? Steal the new kid’s bag and get it out of arm’s reach? I honestly have no idea.
Like many things in this song, nothing is ever the same twice, and this line is one of those things.
I figured, what the hell? I’m already writing about my birth month. Might as well go all in and write about my birth year, too. Turns out it rhymes well.
I still don’t know where this came from, exactly, but it seemed to fit.
I drove my grandparents’ Mercury Sable in my teens, but Sable doesn’t rhyme with “towards us” very well, so a Ford Taurus it was. Do yon kids even know what the hell a Taurus is these days?
Toldja! Not the same twice! Also, I love how this turn of phrase, based on the first pre-chorus, worked out.
Whoa, this sounds happy. What the fuck?! Yeah, this song even has its own (not very widely circulated) meme due to the dichotomy between the lyrics and the music. In the end, this thing ended up sounding much less like “Eli the Barrow Boy” and much more like the hilariously lewd “Philomena”, also by The Decemberists. But still, I love the push/pull between happy and sad. Sure, they would rather be alive, but at least they are together in their favorite place?
This is another element that changes with each repetition.
Also can’t be trusted to stay the same throughout the song.
And again, this musical break is different every time. The melody repeats thrice in this instance. Also, after playing this thing live for so many years, I love the haunting nature of the synth and guitar crossing over that was achieved during recording. Huge thanks to John Ransom’s musical creativity for helping make this section so damn satisfying.
No Pre-Chorus this time!
See? Different this time.
The melody only repeats twice this time.
I leaned all the way into the aforementioned “Philomena” vibes here. Literally sent our producer the song and said, “make the backup vocals sound like this”.
Despite all the bleakness, I hope it’s this little bit of sweetness that ties it all together. They were holding hands the whole time, I think, hence the cover art.
This was originally just my voice and the acoustic guitar until we had the idea to use the bouncy keyboard line. Huge props to our Producer/Mixer Brian Whitscell for making it sound like this was all intentional.
For the third and final chorus, this is different again, and a bit chilling (pardon the pun).
While the first two choruses shared a final line, this one deviates. It’s a bit more sad, I think.
For this third go around, the melody only plays one time before fading out. I like to think this reflects their…well, that’s too dark to write. You decide for yourself.
LOVE this! As much as you’ve told me about how you wrote it, your feelings, and the atmosphere, it was nice to hear — line by line — what your thoughts were and how the words and music came to (frozen) fruition 😁✨Happiest of birthdays, hubby!!! 💛🥳
HAPPY BIRTHDAY