Day 15: Stuck Behind a Train (with Sarah Marie Echsner)

Lyrics:

Now we got a moment
Let me tell you something
'bout my day
Hey hey hey

Put my shoes on backwards
And my turtleneck
Began to fray
Hey hey hey

Tripped down the stairs
Flew through the air
I hurt my back
I heard a loud crack

Not sure what's wrong
But I knew it ain't pretty
Too bad my chiropractor
Had to move to Sin City

And now I am stuck behind this train
And now we are stuck behind this train

"Wow. All that happened to you just today?"
"Yeah. How was your day?"
"Oh, I just went to breakfast."

Let me tell you 'bout my week
My radiator sprung a leak
My great uncle called me a freak
And then I tripped into a creek

Wanna know what happened next?
I received a surprising text
I was winner of a contest
Worst ballerina in the West

And now I am stuck behind this train
And now we are stuck behind this train

"You have had a crazy week. And this is a long train."

Let me tell you 'bout my life
I had a pretty little wife
She had an even larger knife
And then we had some kitchen strife

I hit the road for Colorado
Dreamed of farming Avocados
Blew all my money on the lotto
Now I am a desperado

And now I am stuck behind this train
And now we are stuck behind this train

"Hey! It's finally moving!"
"You wanna hop on the caboose?"
"Well, why the hell not?"
"We got nothing left to lose!"

Choo Choo...

Details: I know Sarah as a songwriter who likes to play with song forms, and I was expecting to write something fairly unconventional with her.

She had just come from teaching Yoga, and I asked her about her week. She said that she felt like she'd been hitting stoplights and getting stuck at train crossings all week, and was a little aggravated. She talked about how she likes to scan through the radio stations at random when she's waiting for a train to pass, so I had the bright idea to write an artsty song where we mimmick how radio scanning sounds, with the abrupt changes in tones mixed with static, music bursts mixed with commercials. I also suggested we bookend that stuff with a more sing-songy part that describes how we got to the train tracks.

Well, we started writing the background for the character in the sing-songy section, and Sarah kept coming up with more and more great stuff, so we just skipped the artsy middle section and went with this crazy, charming song about talking to another person stuck at the same train crossing. I was impressed with how quickly Sarah was able to roll out the ideas for the lyric.

This song was as much fun to write as it looks in the video. It took us about 2.5 hours to write and about 20 minutes to record.