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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 miscellaneous songs. Click Meanings on the left menu for the main page. |
| Click on a title to jump to its meaning. Click here for lyrics. |
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| Hem |
| The Dreamworks press release for the 2003 release of Rabbit Songs says the name Hem is derived from a line in "Lazy Eye." |
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| "It is what it is. It's a hem, like the hemming of a skirt, hemming of a shirt. Basically it was the original song of the...the original name of the next song we're gonna sing, which is 'Lazy Eye.' The chorus is 'I can still see the hem of your dress and the comb as it's parting your hair,' and we felt like the word 'hem' sort of has old fashioned connotations. Clothes are made without hems today, and it's sort of like an old fashioned skill, sewing. And so we felt like it's also sort of hard to define." |
| [Sally Ellyson, Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour, 20 March 2002. You can hear and/or see Hem's performance and interview on this page. It's show #251.] |
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| "Hem was the original name of [our song] 'Lazy Eye.' It came from the line 'I can still see the hem of your dress/and the comb as it's parting your hair.' I really became attached to the line." |
| [Sally Ellyson, GO Brooklyn, 6 January 2003] |
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| Sally: "I loved when [Dan] named the song ['Lazy Eye'] originally 'Hem,' I thought, how subtle. It evokes all these old feelings. It makes you feel like somebody's on a porch, sort of feels old-fashioned and subtle and hard to define. And I just thought it was just beautiful, simple and beautiful." Dan: "For me one of the other reasons why when Sally suggested it I fell in love with it is the idea of hemming something is to close something, it's to close something off. I really felt like with Rabbit Songs we were really closing off one part of our life and starting something new, and it just felt right emotionally." |
| [Sally Ellyson and Dan Messe, "Redwing" promotional CD interview, 2004] |
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| "[L]ead singer Sally Ellyson decided that Hem was the perfect name for the quartet -- 'soft, feminine and old fashioned. Hem is literally an ending and many of the songs are about endings and starting over,' Messe says." |
| [Dan Messe, 34th Street, The Daily Pennsylvanian, 11 November 2004] |
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| Dan: "There's no particularly good reason [for the name Hem]. In the past few years we've usually made up different stories as to how that name came to be." Sally: "What was the most recent? What does it represent? HEM stands for--" Dan: "Historical Exploration of Music. But it's actually not an acronym at all. It's just like the hem of a dress." Sally: "From 'Lazy Eye,' on Rabbit Songs. The song 'Lazy Eye' was originally called 'Hem,' and the lyric is 'I can still see the hem of her dress and the comb as it's parting your hair.' So when that song became 'Lazy Eye,' we didn't have a name for the band yet, and I was attached to the name Hem, and so we called the band Hem." |
| [Dan Messe and Sally Ellyson, Eklektikos on KUT radio, 7 February 2005] |
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| Dan: "It used to be the name of the song 'Lazy Eye.' There's that lyric--" Sally: "I can still see the hem of her dress and the comb as it's parting her hair." Dan: "And ultimately, when the hook of the song 'Lazy Eye' came about and the name 'Hem' was sort of pushed on the wayside, Sally, who loved that name, told me that I either had to write a song called 'Hem' or we were going to call the project 'Hem.'" |
| [Dan Messe (with an assist from Sally Ellyson), The Bob Edwards Show, 10 February 2005. Hear the great, hour-long, XM Radio interview here.] |
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| "[Hem] was originally the name of, on our first album, Rabbit Songs...There is a song called "Lazy Eye," and it used to be called "Hem." And we were trying to figure out what to call the band. Dan wrote the chorus "Lazy Eye" and lost the title of "Hem," and I said, well, I love the name Hem. I feel like it's sort of old-fashioned, hard to pinpoint, but sort of evokes this feeling, like the idea, just for some bizarre reason. I cannot really explain it. And we all agreed that that would be a good name for the band." |
| [Sally Ellyson, WNYC, 14 April 2005] |
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| "It started out as just a one off project, so we didn't even think of ourselves as a band. It wasn't until we realized that we loved what we were doing and we wanted to keep doing it that we had to come up with a name for ourselves. ... No [Hem is not initials]. It's actually just the hem of a dress, another sort of ending. We're all about the endings." |
| [Dan Messe, WNYC, The Leonard Lopate Show, May 2, 2013] |
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| "There's always endings in life, and Hem has always been about endings to some extent. That's what a "hem" is." |
| [Dan Messe, BBC Radio Ulster, October 18, 2013] |
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| I'm Talking With My Mouth |
| "The title 'I'm Talking With My Mouth', comes from an onstage conversation between June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash captured during the recording of Cash's At Fulsom Prison live album, right before they start the song 'Jackson'." |
| [Setanta Records bio, 30 September 2002] |
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| "'The title I'm Talking With My Mouth is in response to Stupid Mouth Shut, from the Rabbit Songs album, which is about being able to say what you want to say, when you're not tongue-tied anymore,' Dan explains. 'It's about being bottled-up emotionally, my whole life. I used to be very stupid and silent. In the last couple of years, at least in my own life, I've gotten beyond that, I fell in love and got married. I'm sort of in this happy place.'" |
| [Dan Messe, The Birmingham Post (UK), 1 October 2002] |
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| "For me [the title] is about simple direct and straightforward communication of emotions." |
| [Sally Ellyson, 2002 UK Press Release included with the 6 track I'm Talking With My Mouth promotional CD] |
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| "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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| "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." |
| [Dan Messe, Playback St. Louis, February 2005] |
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| A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes |
| "The first record I can remember loving when I was young was the Disney Cinderella album," [Sally Ellyson] explains. "I'd play it when I'd go to sleep, and it would end up with this big deep dug groove in the middle where it would just spin all night after I had gone to sleep. And that song always meant so much to me. I always thought it was so full of hope." |
| [Sally Ellyson, No Depression, Nov/Dec 2004. Sally's also mentioned at various live shows how this was one of her first favorite songs.] |
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| "'That particular Cinderella song has always meant a great deal to me, for the lyrics alone. It has such a magical message.'" |
| [Sally Ellyson, The Birmingham Post (UK), 1 October 2002] |
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| "'Disney songs have certainly been a huge influence both on Sally and me,' Dan says. 'I think some of the greatest American songs have been written for Disney movies. They're full of these great standards. Music that was made for children, especially the old Disney tunes, has a beautiful simplicity, some might even say it's cheesy, but it's still very strong.'" |
| [Dan Messe, The Birmingham Post (UK), 1 October 2002] |
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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] |
| Living Without You |
| "The EP is in keeping with the same recording ethic as Rabbit Songs. It is about live analog recording. The Randy Newman song 'Living Without You' is dabbling in a sound that previews what the next album will bring." |
| [Gary Maurer, 2002 UK Press Release included with the 6 track I'm Talking With My Mouth promotional CD] |
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| Dan's a big Randy Newman fan. This song was the first cover performed by the band, when covers were performed at shows because the band didn't yet have enough original songs. |
| [Sally Ellyson, Gary Maurer, and Dan Messe, All About Hem Interview, May 6, 2005] |
| (Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes |
| "We tried a whole bunch of different Elvis Costello songs, and we originally were going to go for the obscure, Elvis Costello fan only, sort of B-side song [for the Elvis Costello tribute album Almost You and then the covers EP], but ultimately we were attracted by the lyric, just the idea of red shoes. We thought that was just sort of a Hem song title, and it just fit so well in Sally's voice that we just couldn't resist it." |
| [Dan Messe, WBJB, The Night Session, April 6, 2003] |
| Valentine's Day |
| The band learned this Bruce Springsteen cover song so Dan could serenade his then-girlfriend, now-wife with it. |
| [Mentioned by Sally when the band played in San Diego, CA on February 3, 2005] |
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| Birds, Beasts & Flowers |
| "Birds and beasts and flowers" is part of a line in the traditional folk song Now The Day Is Over, the hidden track on Hem's Eveningland. |
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| Birds, Beasts, and Flowers is the name of D.H. Lawrence's sixth volume of poetry. That volume includes the poem "The Evening Land," which helped inspire the album title Eveningland. |
| Half Acre |
| Not so much a meaning as an inspiration: Dan Messe wrote this song one year for his parents' anniversary. |
| [Introduced as such when the band performed in Detroit, Michigan in April 2003] |
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| "Gershwin, Kern, and Leonard Bernstein count as influences, as does Aaron Copland. 'Copland was a huge influence,' said Messe, 'especially in the arrangements. If you listen to 'Half Acre,' that's basically a big rip-off of Copland. He created what we considered the American sound to be.'" |
| [Dan Messe, Playback St. Louis, February 2005] |
| 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)] |
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| Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas |
| Mentioned as a "Perfect Song," which was defined as "[a] mythical beast, different from 'The Favorite Song' not in its ability to inspire awe/emotion, but only in it's objective flawlessness." This song is listed as "[t]he saddest Christmas song ever written. Crosses over into Favorite Song category for lines like '...until then we'll have to muddle through somehow.'" |
| [Dan Messe, MySpace Blog, 8 August 2005] |
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| Half Asleep |
| "In fact, a longstanding fan of the film [Amélie], Messé even divulges that the Hem song 'Half Asleep,' from 2007’s Home Again, Home Again EP was actually influenced by a certain scene in the movie. 'I wrote that imagining that scene where Amélie and Nino are speaking between the door,' he says, 'So I’d already written a song for those characters, but then it took years and years to get the rights.'" |
| [Dan Messe, Paste Magazine, 20 August 2013] |
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