Song Story: "Avalon"

You do not belong to anyone

Of all the songs that eventually got people tapping their toes to this weird band, “Avalon” was perhaps the biggest surprise. It surprised me when I wrote it. It surprised the band when I brought it to them, and it surprised some of the few folks who actually listened to us at the time, because it was so off-brand. This band that had just released an album where they klezmer-screamed about Polka, Cider, Gin and Poutine was suddenly doing, like, a… Bruce Springsteen ballad?

But let’s hit rewind here: as I was noodling around on the acoustic guitar, I remember being disappointed that my newest riff sounded so much like the “Antarctica” riff, which in turn sounds like a million other celt-punk songs. I thought: if we turn this into a banger, it will sound just like Antarctica.

So then the next natural thought was: well, don’t turn it into a banger, then?

And so we didn’t:

God damn that’s a sweet accordion tone.

There are four big influences on the song and the sound, here:

1. Springsteen, for the lyrical style. You’d be surprised how many people in the folk-punk world love this guy; Finny from the Mahones has recorded him, the dudes from Smokey Bastard love him; it’s common. Jamer from the Surfin Turnips, on the other hand, told me that Springsteen sounds “like Trump went to a mall and wrote some songs”. He’s such an idiot.

2. Cheryl Crow’s brilliant song “Redemption Day”, which had always left me wanting to write a ballad with that driving train’s-a-comin’ beat. And which had been covered by…

3. Johnny Cash, on his legendary final recordings with Rick Rubin, which also features brilliant songs like “When the Man Comes Around”. These records gave me the idea to have that big loud Piano bonnggg note to accentuate each chord, a trick which is all over those late Cash recordings. And finally,

4. Mark Knopfler’s solo stuff. I grew up on Dire Straits and became a mega-fan of MK once he moved into celtic-folk inspired soft rock. And after we released “Avalon” he released “Privateering”, proving that we were vibing with this guy, man.

People have asked me what this song is about. It’s (surprise surprise) a soldier from the West Country, but he’s singing about his daughter, who will grow up without a father because he is currently rotting in the ground on the Stonne Plateau in France. Avalon is both the name of his homeland and the name of his child, who will grow up amongst the beauty and history of that place. She will “carve her name into the stone”, and this brings him comfort, since as he says to her “you are my peace of mind”. And his final message is both for her and for his home. He says, summing up what he has learned after being part of organized mass murder: you do not belong to anyone.

And to get a little personal and psychological, in writing this, I had the oddest experience of feeling like this little girl was real. Like in penning the lyrics, there was a little girl whose voice and experiences I had to speak to. I know, kooky mystical shit, man.

Finally, looking back on it, I also have to say something that I almost never say about our recordings. Almost every time I listen to a Dreadnoughts song I think that we recorded it too slow. Not this one. This one is too fast. I randomly tapped out the tempo in the studio, taking a wild guess, and that’s what we went with, and wow was that ever dumb. It’s too damn fast.