Story Songs is a recurring series on MLNP, where I share the evolution and inspiration behind a song I’ve helped create.
In March 2019, the band I’m in released its first EP, It Takes a Lot.
This release followed the full-length records Ramble On (2006), Family Tree (2016), and Let It Breathe (2017).
EPs (extended-play) are a fun format—more songs than a single, but not enough for an LP (long-player).
While we had more than enough material for a full album worked up at that time, our notion was that we might release a series of four EPs; one per season. Sure, the seasonal theme had the makings of a catchy stunt—and we remain convinced our “Thanksgiving Album” would be brilliant—but our real goal was to create a recording calendar that would be more manageable in our lives.
And so, over the course of a year, we recorded and released three EPs (It Takes a Lot (three songs) was followed by Not Today (five songs) and Join a Band (four songs)).
Then, in the middle days of the pandemic, we recorded the songs for the fourth EP.
Rather than releasing those final five songs as a standalone EP, we compiled them with the three existing EPs and our one-off pandemic single to create the double-album Hard Times.
Convoluted? A bit. It’s kind of our thing.
All told, Hard Times featured eighteen songs over two discs.
Plus, our friends John Burkett and Zach Vessels had made short films from those recording sessions, so we included those videos as a DVD in the package.
Hard Times became three discs.
Ah, the last dying days of physical product.
The album is also streaming on Spotify:
In hindsight, I think of the It Takes a Lot EP as our “divorce record.”
That’s really a thing.
From Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love—which are, to my ears and my heart, each of those artists’ finest records—to more modern takes like Adele’s 30, Nas’s Life Is Good and Kacey Musgraves’ star-crossed, “divorce records” are really a genre of their own.
Over the course of recording and releasing It Takes a Lot, two ’Hoppers became divorced.
The songs we picked to record for that first EP just fit together in a particular way.
While surely motivated by the deep January recording sessions, we never really discussed with each other what actually motivated the writing of those songs, or what stories are tucked away in them.
Still haven’t.
To me, they sound like winter. They sound like walking through the snow to the studio, they sound like scraping the ice off our windows after the session, they sound like the quickened goodbyes and abbreviated parking lot hugs as we finished mixing and sought the shelter of our cars.
The songs on the EP are “It Takes a Lot,” “The Way Up” and “Santa Ana.”
I suppose nothing connotes a time and place in the human memory like a song.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s what all of this is. Less the content of the songs; more the way life became unearthed and untethered at that time—one part a candlelit channel, one part a deadly undertow.
The EP was made at Off the Cuff by Casey Stansifer, Chris Dodds, Colin Boyd, Dan Smyth, Phil Potts and myself.
We produced the sessions with Off the Cuff’s Jason Davis, who also engineered and mixed. We welcomed the guest vocals of Cassie Beer (“The Way Up”) and Ian Pettit (“It Takes a Lot”) from the band Rosalind & The Way.
We released the EP with a memorable show in the under-construction Landing, revealing the secret location to ticket-holders just hours before the event.
That concert was produced with my friend and coworker at OLG, Olivia Fabian, and recorded by our friend John Burkett of Red Tide Productions.
It Takes a Lot
It’s hard to leave; to say goodbye.
—
(The) Way Up
We all just sit and wait
for leaves to change on an uncertain date.
They fall while we’re at work;
next thing you know, the season’s turned…
Someday after a long while
I hope we’re brave enough to smile
with those tears running down our cheeks
—
Santa Ana
Hey, Santa Ana, will you please blow me away?
Out to the ocean, from the hills where Devil Winds play.
Hey Santa Ana, don’t you go easy on me.
Out to the ocean, where I’ll confess my sins to the sea…
“Santa Ana” was originally called “Santa Ana Hummingbird.”
Santa Ana winds occur in Southern California. (Further north, they’re called “Diablo Winds.”)
Figure that’s why there’s a lot of gold in the song.
When we recorded Ramble On in Mill Valley, CA in the fall of 2005, we spent a memorable, windy night on Muir Beach.
Like Tom Petty sang, “California’s been good to me [us]; hope it don’t fall into the sea.”
Much later, on my oft-mentioned trip to Patmos, Greece, I went on a sailing excursion into the jagged, deep blue Icarian Sea, a “subdivision” of the Aegean, and our tour guides pointed out the spot where Icarus fell from the sky.
I’m completing the final edit on this essay, and writing its epilogue, in a VRBO apartment in Tulsa, OK.
It’s August 15.
Tomorrow, I’ll visit the Bob Dylan Center, home to the archives of Bob Dylan’s musical existence.
On the winding road trip here, I took a side trip to Baxter Springs and Riverton, Kansas, where my Trainhopper bandmate Phil Potts was born and grew up, respectively.
I saw the hospital where he was born; I went to the small ranch house he was raised in, across from the cotton fields; I marked the mossy dam he used to explore.
It’s kinda wild how, and when, and why you meet the people you meet in your life; the unexpected roles they play. The way you orbit and intersect and fall away and fall together.
I wouldn’t have made it through the last few years without my bandmates: Phil and Chris and Casey and Dan.
Yes, we make music together.
And yes, we have fun doing it.
But we are a band— which is to say, we are bound together—in so many deep and meaningful and difficult-to-describe ways.
I drove Tulsa to try to catch some glimpse of how Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan.
But my trip is already a success, because tonight, I have a greater understanding of how Phil Potts became Phil Potts.
Time escapes; I hold on.
PS Friendly reminder that MLNP is my (MK’s) point of view, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the feelings of my bandmates, coworkers or family. Ever.
I love these Story Songs posts, learning more about the mythos behind Trainhopper tunes, and the band itself. A few of my favorite songs here, recorded with beautiful videos as well. What a legendary show, even for the Trainhoppers. I've always loved those opening lines to The Way Up. It is a seasonal song. And it's one of Augie's favorites as well. Interesting to catch the Icarus line in a song written before your trip to Greece. That had to of been cool, on several levels. Thanks for the time, Matt, and for putting yours and the bands' art out into the world.