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| "[A]s far I'm concerned, the songs are almost completely lyric driven." |
| -Dan Messe, Crud Magazine, 13 March 2002 |
| This meanings section is a collection of quotes from band members about the meanings behind their song lyrics, album titles, and band name. Songs can and do mean different things to different people, but I think it's interesting to know the inspiration behind songs. Meanings for the cover songs aren't about song content so much as what spurred the band to record them. |
| This is the page for songs on Eveningland. Click Meanings on the left menu for the main page. |
| Click on a title to jump to its meaning. Click here for Eveningland lyrics. |
| Eveningland (Album Title) |
| "I guess one of the things that runs through the album is that there's sort of a lot of awareness of death, and that just seemed like an appropriate word for that. It actually comes from a D.H. Lawrence poem, "The Evening Land," which is about America as the land of death, which I kind of don't quite understand, but I sort of coopted." |
| [Dan Messe, KEXP In Studio Performance, 28 January 2005. See also Birds, Beasts & Flowers.] |
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| Sally says, "I think [the chandelier on the album's cover is there] to evoke the idea of evening. The idea of 'in the evening.' It's night, but there's just something about the word 'evening.'" Dan elaborates, "There's a lyric in 'Fire Thief,' the end of "Fire Thief," which is sort of the theme-defining song of the album. "Leave the light on." Obviously, fear is a big theme for both albums, I think, and I always like to approach things from the view of a child, especially now that there are children in our lives. You know, children who are afraid of the dark and need the light on. But also the fact that, in 'Fire Thief' you're basically saying, I can't hide from you. I'm going to see. You're going to see me the way I really am. So the whole idea of light is an important idea in the album. So, it's not just the chandelier, there's on the back of the album another light. Behind the CD is another light." |
| [Sally Ellyson and Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
| A-Hunting We Will Go |
| "At the time [I wrote this song] I had this ridiculous idea that I was going to update all the children's songs I used to sing as a kid with new music, and this was the first and only edition of that." |
| [Dan Messe on June 6, 2006 at The Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC. This song updates the same-named kid's song A Hunting We Will Go.] |
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| Carry Me Home |
| "'Carry Me Home' is interesting because I don't usually write in other people's voices. I'm not a confessional songwriter by any means. In that song I actually try to write in someone else's voice. It's about this person who had this horrifying thing happen to them as a child, sort of undescribed, and the need to go back there and fix things." |
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| "That song was sort of my attempt at writing a murder ballad because I was interested in that song form at the time. So that was the original intent, but I was less interested in the murder than I was in just sort of getting past, you know, how you do heal from something like that. And in that case it's someone you'll bury them, you'll take care of all this for me, and of course, you can't do it, you always have to bury your own dead." |
| [Dan Messe, ASCAP Audio Portraits. Go here to read the whole, very interesting transcript about Eveningland.] |
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| "['Carry Me Home' is] a song about someone who had a very rough childhood and wants to find comfort in certain ways and ultimately wants to get back home. Someone, I can't even remember, it might have even been Suzanne Vega, was talking about the difference between autobiographical songwriting and confessional songwriting. I'm not a confessional songwriter at all, but I do feel like I try to write if not the actual truth the emotional truth behind my life." |
| [Dan Messe, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "I wrote that in college, when Steve Curtis and I met. I was really interested in murder ballads at the time, and it started out as just a murder ballad. But ultimately I became less interested in the crime and more interested in how one gets over something traumatic like that, some very hard thing in your life. It's all a metaphor." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
| Cincinnati Traveler |
| "[F]or Eveningland, we know we wanted that huge, peaceful, cinematic world that the instrumental 'Eveningland' sort of defines. But we also want to show some of the corners of the world still exist as like the more Rabbit Songs 'Cincinnati Traveler,' which is really like a Civil War or Appalachian sort of song." |
| [Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
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| Cincinnati was the name of Ulysses S. Grant's horse and Traveler was the name of Robert E. Lee's horse, and Dan thought to put those two words together for a song title. When he didn't write music or lyrics for the song, he offered the title to Steve who'd written this song that has a very Civil War era melody. (Later in 2005 this song did get lyrics and was recorded for the album No Word From Tom.) |
| [Steve Curtis, Gary Maurer, and Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
| An Easy One |
| "Dan wrote ['An Easy One'] for his wife and his son Reuben. I love the chorus and the idea because we all are on tour so often away from the people we love. It really gets me singing those ideas of just saying, 'Hey, I know you're asleep and I know that I don't want to wake you up, but I love you so much. I hope you know that even if I'm not here and I'm going to get pulled away again, I really love you.'" |
| [Sally Ellyson, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "That song went through a lot of iterations. I think its first title was 'Now Will You Believe Me.' And then when I realized I couldn't fit the words 'now will you believe me' in the song,' it became 'Passerby.' And then 'An Easy One.' It's about, because we live our lives partly away from those that we love and our family, and it's very hard to always be coming or going. We sort of cling to each other on the road, but now that I have a son, and another baby about two weeks away, the thought of leaving them is just heartbreaking. And the thought that we could connect to them through the glance of a stranger on the street is this sort of magical fantasy that obviously doesn't happen. I know Sally just got married too, and I think we literally snatched her from her honeymoon to go on this tour. I'm speaking for you now, but I think she's also looking for any connection on the street to that feeling of family." |
| [Dan Messe (with Sally Ellyson sitting next to him), The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| "I picture a feeling of when you're home and you're looking at your family at night and you just don't want to wake them up, so you're speaking this love out into the universe." |
| [Sally Ellyson, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
| Eveningland (The Song) |
| "Our songs are almost always built around an image or a scene, a set piece. When I'm writing a song I can picture it in my head, and I wanted that place, Eveningland, fleshed out. I could picture it, could absolutely see this land of shadows and water, and so I just wanted a moment on the album where Eveningland is fleshed out musically." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| This instrumental song helps define one of the album's themes by being/creating a huge, cinematic world. |
| [Steve Curtis and Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
| The Fire Thief |
| "'The Fire Thief' in particular was the first song I wrote for my son. Just the thought that anything bad could happen to someone that you love so much was terrifying, and I never, I don't want him to feel any terror." |
| [Dan Messe, ASCAP Audio Portraits. Go here to read the whole, very interesting transcript about "Eveningland".] |
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| "'The Fire Thief' was the first song I ever wrote for my son. It's this idea of wanting to always have him find comfort in things. That is also one of the productions that every time I hear it, it's so strange but it's so compelling. Like I told Greg Pliska [who arranged Eveningland] when we were talking about the [Slovak Radio National] Orchestra, that we wanted it to sound like Willy Wonka. That's an amazing soundtrack and amazing arrangements in that movie, but I wanted that sense of anything could happen at any moment, and he really captured that beautifully." |
| [Dan Messe, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "'[Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory is] an amazing soundtrack,' [Dan Messe] raves. 'How could you not love those songs? I mean, just the arrangements -- I think if I had to point my finger at where we got the sound for our arrangements on this album, it's that soundtrack. If you listen to 'Fire Thief' [the opening track on Eveningland], the string arrangements are very much based on some of those Willy Wonka arrangements.'" |
| [Dan Messe, No Depression, Nov/Dec 2004.] |
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| "'The Fire Thief,' Eveningland's opening track, was the first song Messe wrote for his son Reuben, and it sets up what he considers the record's narrative theme: taking comfort, whether in a spouse, child, friends or a beautiful song." |
| [Paste Magazine, December 2004] |
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| "There's a lyric in 'Fire Thief,' the end of 'Fire Thief,' which is sort of the theme-defining song of the album. 'Leave the light on.' Obviously, fear is a big theme for both albums, I think, and I always like to approach things from the view of a child, especially now that there are children in our lives. You know, children who are afraid of the dark and need the light on. But also the fact that, in 'Fire Thief' you're basically saying, I can't hide from you. I'm going to see. You're going to see me the way I really am." |
| [Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
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| "The original idea for the song, which I thought was really clever-clever, but it took a bad idea, was that it was going to be another song like 'When I Was Drinking' about the idea where you seek comfort, whether it's alcohol or whatever, wherever you seek comfort." The phrase "fire thief" is a reference to the myth of Prometheus. The general idea is that comfort-seeking behavior, like Prometheus stealing fire, can lead to something very bad, like Prometheus getting chained to a rock and having his innards eaten out anew every day. As Dan summed up: "Ultimately I realized that there was a better idea for the song, which is just ultimately, life is hard enough, and let's just find comfort where we can, and let's not worry about our intestines being picked out." |
| [Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
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| "'The Fire Thief' was the first song that I wrote for my son when he was born. I just wanted this boy to be able to always be able to take comfort in this world no matter how hard it could be. It sort of became the theme of the album [Eveningland]. Prometheus was the fire thief who stole fire. Ultimately I think he was eternally eviscerated for it or something like that. I chose to gloss over that whole part. I just wanted the comfort part." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
| Hollow |
| "['Hollow'] was a song that I probably wrote 25 times and took each version to Dan. It feels the most Hem-like of all the songs I've written, and I think that's a function of the fact that it's something that he and I worked really closely on for a long time." |
| [Steve Curtis, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "I think that's one of the most romantic songs. I have dedicated that song to every single person's spouse or partner in the band at some point during a show because it's a good ode to love." |
| [Sally Ellyson, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| "That's definitely one of my favorite songs on the album. And as a producer, and Gary [Maurer] I can speak for, it's one of our proudest moments as producers. It feels like in those other songs that we love, that anything can happen. When that flute choir comes in, what a strange sound but at the same time how perfect for the lyric that Steve [Curtis] wrote." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| Jackson |
| "I was listening to my copy of 'At Folsom Prison,' and there's that great exchange of dialogue that Johnny Cash and June Carter have where June comes up on stage and Johnny says, 'I love to watch you talk.' Then June says, 'Well, I'm talking with my mouth; it's way up here,' because he's looking at her breasts. And I just loved that phrase ("I'm talking with my mouth"), and I knew I wanted to call this EP 'I'm Talking with My Mouth.' That's the intro to the song 'Jackson,' so I thought, well why not try to 'Hem-ify' that song. And we'd been writing a lot of songs about marriage at the time. Like I'd written 'Strays' and 'Lucky,' which are, for me, about getting married and settling down. And that song ('Jackson') is sort of the flipside of marriage. So, it just seemed like a natural. And then we found this sort of great arrangement that sort of brought out the melancholy behind the sass. We just sort of fell in love with it." |
| [Dan Messe, Country Time Standard, December 2004] |
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| "And my friend Tom Bodean had just given me a mix which had 'Jackson' on it. There's that dialogue between Johnny and June Carter, where he brings his wife up and she's talking, and he goes, 'Y'know, I love to watch you talk.' She says, 'I'm talking with my mouth, it's up here,' because, you know, he was looking at her breasts. And I just loved that phrase, 'I'm talking with my mouth.' It's straightforward. I mean, there's a sexual undertone, too, but I think it's really, 'I'm being as straightforward as I can, the most important part of myself.' And so we decided to call that album I'm Talking With My Mouth. So of course, we had to cover 'Jackson' if we did that. And we went about reinventing it. As soon as we heard Sally singing it, we realized this fun little song was actually very melancholy." |
| [Dan Messe, Playback St. Louis, February 2005] |
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| "We each got to pick one [song on the EP], and I think Gary was a big influence on the Johnny Cash/June Carter version of 'Jackson,' so he basically decided we'll slow it down a little bit, Hemify it." |
| [Sally Ellyson, Gideon Coe session, BBC 6 Music, 16 February 2005] |
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| "With [Eveningland], a lot of the songs we were writing about marriage and settling down and the ideas of family and stuff like that, and it just seemed like a perfect song to include thematically. And also, just the whole Johnny Cash/June Carter era of album making was sort of a touchstone for the sound that we were going for on Eveningland." |
| [Dan Messe, Gideon Coe session, BBC 6 Music, 16 February 2005] |
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| "Between albums, we usually try to record an EP featuring cover songs as a way of exploring new sounds for the next full-length album. For example, when we recorded our cover of Johnny and June’s 'Jackson,' it helped us move toward the lush sound of our album Eveningland." |
| [Dan Messe, Noisetrade interview, 19 February 2013] |
| Lucky |
| "I was listening to my copy of 'At Folsom Prison,' and there's that great exchange of dialogue that Johnny Cash and June Carter have where June comes up on stage and Johnny says, 'I love to watch you talk.' Then June says, 'Well, I'm talking with my mouth; it's way up here,' because he's looking at her breasts. And I just loved that phrase ("I'm talking with my mouth"), and I knew I wanted to call this EP 'I'm Talking with My Mouth.' That's the intro to the song 'Jackson,' so I thought, well why not try to 'Hem-ify' that song. And we'd been writing a lot of songs about marriage at the time. Like I'd written 'Strays' and 'Lucky,' which are, for me, about getting married and settling down. And that song ('Jackson') is sort of the flipside of marriage." |
| [Dan Messe, Country Time Standard, December 2004] |
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| "Despite this admitted weakness for gaming, the subject of gambling hasn't yet explicitly made it into Hem's music. 'The song "Lucky" from the new album is a little bit about gambling,' [Dan] Messe adds weakly, though." |
| [Country Time Standard, December 2004] |
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| This song is about when you feel so happy that you know, no matter what happens or goes wrong, nothing can take that happiness away. However, there's a little pain in the happiness because now you have something to lose. |
| [Mentioned when Sally introduced this song in San Francisco, CA on February 2, 2005. She also apologized if you've never had that feeling, which is so cute. The second sentence is additional info from Sally at Hem's show in Denver, CO on Jan. 25, 2005.] |
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| Dan noted that a lot of the songs he writes are sad or about bad relationships and wondered if his wife didn't think he was sending her a message! So he wrote a song that says even if everything else was terrible I would still be lucky because I have you. In London, Dan elaborated a bit and said how most of his songs are about dysfunctional love, but when you get married, and you want to stay married, sooner or later you have to write a proper love song. |
| [Dan Messe on April 22, 2005 at The Church House in Haddam, CT and on June 22, 2005 at Shepherds Bush Empire in London (Thanks to Fuzzyman and Richard at Hem's Forum for the info)] |
| My Father's Waltz |
| "It's a sad story [behind this song]. My dad had cancer this past year and we were just trying to keep him alive as long as we could, and so I wrote that song for him. I got to see him love that song, and then he passed away." |
| [Dan Messe, Eklektikos on KUT radio, February 7, 2005] |
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| "My father, he had cancer this past year and we were trying to keep him alive. We actually just lost him about a month ago. I wrote that song for him and had Sally sing it. We burned him a copy when he went to the hospital. I know it made him very happy, and I know it probably kept him there a little longer than he otherwise might've been. Like so many of our songs it's about trying to find comfort in what can be an incredibly hard place to live." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| Written about Dan's father. His father was very sick in 2004. Dan wanted this song to be the first one mixed so that his father could hear it before he died, which he did. |
| [Mentioned at various live shows, including on April 22, 2005 at The Church House in Haddam, CT where Dan discussed it more than usual (Thanks to Fuzzyman at Hem's Forum for the info)] |
| Pacific Street |
| "The neighborhood that Sally and I became family on in Brooklyn, the streets of Cobble Hill are ocean names. They're Atlantic, Pacific, Baltic, and it always struck me as this place where people are constantly leaving or coming to. It just seemed appropriate, a great metaphor. It just seemed like a great way for her to talk about our home. So much of what we write about is about home in one way or another, and ['Pacific Street' is] one of the big ones." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| Written about Brooklyn, where the band's based. It's also the first song Dan Messe wrote with Sally Ellyson's voice in mind. It talks about how when they first knew each other they lived nearby in Brooklyn. Many of the streets in the area were named after oceans. They were both in relationships that were ending and would meet up at a bar to commiserate. (FYI, Sally and Dan are both now happily married to other people.) |
| [Mentioned at various live shows, including on April 22, 2005 at The Church House in Haddam, CT where Dan added most of these details (Thanks to Fuzzyman at Hem's Forum for the info)] |
| Receiver |
| "One of Eveningland’s highlights is the lush "Receiver," which Messe admits was a nod to the soft-rock greats [like Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, and albums by Glen Campbell and even the Carpenters]." |
| [Eveningland biography press release] |
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| "['Receiver'] started out as an homage to The Carpenters, who I'm hugely enamored with and who I think Sally's voice reminds me of Karen to some extent, both gorgeous altos. Growing up in the 70s, that feeling of the summertime listening to radio where those sorts of songs were playing and just feeling like that moment would never change, that sense of immortality that those moments would sort of bestow upon a person." |
| [Dan Messe, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "'Receiver' is to me just a window into this innocent, hopeful, exciting world that we all experience when you're just becoming an adult and you're a teenager and just feel like the world is filled with possibilities. I just have this gorgeous imagery that goes through my mind when I sing that song thanks to Dan's beautiful words." |
| [Sally Ellyson, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| Dan tried to write a happy song about listening to the radio, hearing an old song, and being mentally taken back to a time of teenage youth and innocence. |
| [Dan Messe on April 22, 2005 at The Church House in Haddam, CT, as summarized by Fuzzyman at Hem's Forum] |
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| "'Receiver' was definitely our homage to The Carpenters. I just remember the summers, sneaking up onto the roof, and that feeling of timelessness." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
| Redwing |
| "There's a bunch of lyrics on the album [Eveningland] about the world below or what we call the world below. There's a lot of knowledge of death that sort of seeps through the album, especially when you're feeling very much alive. ['Redwing'] is very much about trying to free yourself of those sorts of fears." |
| [Dan Messe, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "Like a lot of my songs, it's about fear and either succumbing to or overcoming fear and the desire to break free from the things that are holding you back." |
| [Dan Messe, The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| "[T]o me it's just like saying..."the heart is still a redwing." Even though you're scared of everything, the heart will always lift you up. It's sort of corny..." |
| [Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
| Strays |
| "I was listening to my copy of 'At Folsom Prison,' and there's that great exchange of dialogue that Johnny Cash and June Carter have where June comes up on stage and Johnny says, 'I love to watch you talk.' Then June says, 'Well, I'm talking with my mouth; it's way up here,' because he's looking at her breasts. And I just loved that phrase ("I'm talking with my mouth"), and I knew I wanted to call this EP 'I'm Talking with My Mouth.' That's the intro to the song 'Jackson,' so I thought, well why not try to 'Hem-ify' that song. And we'd been writing a lot of songs about marriage at the time. Like I'd written 'Strays' and 'Lucky,' which are, for me, about getting married and settling down. And that song ('Jackson') is sort of the flipside of marriage." |
| [Dan Messe, Country Time Standard, December 2004] |
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