Sneak Preview - City Hall

Each Monday (or Tuesday, apparently) until our second full-length album Come For the Peaks, Stay For the Valleys is released on December 2nd, I'll be posting a song off the record on our myspace page for you to preview and enjoy and talking a little bit about each song on this here blog.

Week eight: City Hall

I chose to put this song up on election week intentionally. I'm not big into joining politics with my music, but every now and then, something will get under my skin, for example basic human rights and equality and dumb crap like that. I know - totally outrageous. I honestly don't recall if there was a specific event that was the catalyst for the lyrics for "City Hall" because generally I have a pretty big problem with the fact that, in the U.S., I can't legally marry my partner. Having grown up in an overwhelmingly conservative good-ole-boy Wyoming and Montana environment, I know first-hand that people who oppose gay marriage often have insane misconceptions about what happens in a same-sex relationship and thus are frightened by it. Plus, we all know the "sanctity of marriage" is bullshit considering how many heterosexual marriages end in divorce and that two loving, committed adults who are financially stable enough to procure a child into their lives are a lot better off raising said child than all the single teenage mothers from which resources and social services were stripped in the name of abstinence education. WTF? And seriously, if any nurse or doctor stops my partner from being able to see me if I'm on my deathbed because we're not legally related and because she doesn't have the Power of Attorney documents that I had the foresight have drawn-up on hand , I swear to god I will haunt the living shit out of that person.

Now look, I'm all fired up. Good thing I'm about to go vote.

Anyway, "City Hall" is about religious oppression, the hypocrisy in Christianity with regard to which "words of God" are chosen to be enforced, and people assigning themselves higher moral stature while disregarding the virtue of tolerance. Or, as Ben likes to say, it's about the Fat Cats in Washington.

Practicing this song is always fun because I usually nearly have an aneurysm after holding out the long note at the end. For serious - watch me at a show and you might notice me keeling over with veins popping out of my forehead after this song. It's a rocker and it's a blast to play.

It was the last song we ended up recording. It was about 3:00 am on our last day in the studio. Marie had been drumming for 12+ hours for three day straight and we were all insanely tired and becoming really, really goofy. Somehow, we got through this song and attempted to record "Tina Fey" afterword, but we were spent and couldn't even get through the first chorus of "Tina Fey". There was no music left in any of us. We usually end our set with "City Hall" and it felt appropriate to put it as the closing punch-in-the-face on our album.

In closing: VOTE!

City Hall

Foot over foot
Fist over fist
They marched to the stairs
Already plenty pissed
off

Take a number
Wait in line
When the time comes
They’ll call yours and skip mine
Next

Half-assed
Please explain your tattoos
Your long hair
Your chicks with bare heads
Pick and choose
The rules only you abuse

I don’t see a deity
To your left
So you’re not his right hand
And you’re not any more blessed

Take a number
Fall in line
When the time comes
Don’t be scared of a little riot

It’s a federation of people who believe they can leave
Unscathed in the end through storybook means
If it’s written, it must be true
It’s the foundation, it’s the glue
Of your Genovese Syndrome to look past what you’re doing

Bound tightly by ignorance
Held together by greed
Overfed and under read
No foot in reality
Proud parents of mediocrity

Is this God’s will - to be a Bluetooth borg?
Soulless in the suburbs with a handsome man and a mortgage?
A pile of bills and a load of guilt to pass onto my kids
Who exchange expression for economics
and fresh air for TV?

Step outside these lines and you’re a heathen or a whore
Now remind me again, what was your Christ nailed for?
To give you the capital and power to write laws that keep me in line?
Well, etch a name in my flesh when I die
Because I’m in this fight for life