Patterson Hood and the Screwtopians
Collateral Damage And Then Some
Aug 6, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Engineered by David Barbe and Drew Vandenberg
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Heavy and Hanging
original version appears on Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
Wrote this song in 1994, shortly after the suicide of Kurt Cobain. Still reeling from my own personal demons as well as news accounts of OJ Simpson and River Phoenix. Excited about having recently moved to Athens GA and my immersion into the mighty club scene here. The recording of this song for the album, "Murdering Oscar," captured the spirit of my original intended arrangement and here the live performance takes that even further.
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Pollyanna
original version appears on Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
I wrote this song in 1991 at one of my personal lowest ebbs. Every line kind of has its own inner-meaning and all adds up to an implied story that probably isn't even there. I love the idea of exploring such murky depths in such a poppy setting.
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Belvedere
original version appears on Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
This song is a fictional account of a truly terrible guy, albeit one with a really cool car. Another of the 1994 songs that we revisited on the "Murdering Oscar" (And Other Love Songs) album. Here I get my secret grunge on.
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Back Of A Bible
original version appears on Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
Here is one of the more recent response songs I wrote for the album. This one was written exactly like it describes in the song. In a hotel room before a show at The Earl in Atlanta. I actually like that hotel though. That part about the shitty room was inspired a few nights earlier in a dive motel in Dallas. My wife was starting to show from her pregnancy with our daughter Ava Ruth. I don't write many love songs.
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All The Girls Love Alice
unreleased
Anyone within ten years of my age that doesn't own up to once being an Elton John fan is either lying or worse. This was my favorite song on "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" when I was a kid and I've always wanted to cover it. The Screwtopians provided me with the perfect lineup to do so. Bernie Taupin's lyrics were always kinda silly, but here that actually works to their advantage. Elton's sense of melody has always been spot on, especially when he had Nigel, Davey and Dee rocking it out.
It's not something that I think about all too often, but it's probably better if I did cause it might be classified as a form of empathy. Today, at a Wal-Mart for the first time in months and months - since a few days before Christmas and still without a tree, knowing that it might be the last place to find some scraps amongst the aisles because it's only there where there's never a shortage - a van full of rounder women were loading into a clunker of a minivan in need of countless repairs even to the naked eye. They'd just purchased everything they needed at least for the week, if not longer. Before the doors had closed or slid shut, two of them were already ripping the wrappers off of grab bags of potato chips and king size candy bars. I was walking close enough to the vehicle to smell a stench of rotten and stale cigarette smoke get thrust in my direction with the shutting of the doors. A belly flap hung over the steering wheel and I wondered what they were going to be doing next, to what kind of a home they were going to, whether or not they were happy and if they had anything to look forward to tomorrow or if it was just going to be more of the same old junk. There I was thinking depressing thoughts, the answer to all the questions was the worst answer possible - all no's and doubt its - and the wretched lives of the southern characters that Mr. Patterson Hood builds all of his creativity around started making themselves evident. They are the people who fear the bank and all of the suits, fear the government and all of its laws, hate having to put ties on and last calls. They are people who love suffocating their sorrows in lethal amounts of alcohol, who wear cracked boots nearly everywhere they go and are some of the most tried and true, loyal people that anyone could ever meet. Their blood runs thicker and hotter than most and they care about family before they care about manners and tact. They have rusty, broken down cars on their property and they never miss a chance to hug, kiss or fish if the hugging, kissing or fishing are good. They fight fairly and they get loud when they have to, spitting a mouthful of tobacco juice out of the side of their face before getting too riled up that it would get messy. These are people with guts and people with thick skin who still turn red at times and they are people who feel things with their whole bodies and not just their pinky fingers. They get nervous about where the next paycheck is coming from and also about pregnancies some of the time. Their hands are clean, but not too clean and they are the ones who know what really goes on at the end of the gravel road out in the middle of four fields where there are no streetlights. They are people who know what they're about, but so few others do, kind of like those women at the Wal-Mart. They'll live their lives the way they do and they answer to themselves at the end of the day. It's sad and it's just the way it is. There are still these complexities to their simple lives that make better tales than those of the men and women of silver spoons and sleek autos. When you're around a Patterson Hood song, your nose automatically detects gasoline and your ears detect a flame getting struck in the shadows somewhere, indicating that shit's going to get all fucked up. You don't run for the hills though. You wait to see just how fucked up. You wait to see who else will take on the collateral damage of the explosion. You wait to see who's alive at the end of them and you wait around to feel all of the emotional carnage that's bound to escort every last one involved in the telling of these stories.
Patterson Hood Official Site
Patterson's Note:
We went into David Barbe's Chase Park Transduction studio in late June of this year, a couple of days after completing the first leg of our tour and bashed these five songs out live on the floor. Everyone was really connected and playing great off of each other. I wanted to capture what I had been hearing on stage that week and we did so with wild abandon. Everything is slightly fast in the best way imaginable.
