Broom People
Lyrics
'36 hudson in the garage,
all sorts of junk in the unattached spare room,
dishes in the kitchen sink,
new straw for the old broom,
friends who dont have a clue,
well meaning teachers,
but down in your arms,
in your arms, I am a wild creature.
floor two[1] foot high with newspapers,
white carpet thick with pet hair,
half eaten gallons of ice cream in the freezer,
fresh fuel for the sodium flares,
I write down good reasons to freeze to death
in my spiral ring notebook,
but in the long tresses of your hair
I am a babbling brook.
Banter
- So this is a song about how I was fourteen years old and I had gotten to high school and I was kind of terrified to be in high school because I was a scrawny little fellow, unlike the gigantic, hulking mass you see before you today. And I was pretty terrified because in junior high, it was bad. There were people going to kick my ass, but there weren’t so many of them. But the high school in my town, there’s nine hundred people there and I knew there was a fair number who’d be just waiting on me to get there, to kick my ass, right. And I was tiny - I was a little fellow - and I got there and the first month or two was pretty bad. First semester was pretty bad. And then I met a girl named Marcy Deem. Marcy Deem was the chief of the stage makeup crew. Marcy Deem and I began to date. Shortly thereafter, we began having sex three times a day. [Audience cheers.] You’re fucking right! Because, then, when I’d be getting my ass kicked, I’d look up at the guy kicking my ass, and go ‘You can kick my ass all day! It’ll still be two years before you’re where I’m at. Biatch.’ This is the only song I ever wrote for Marcy Deem, whom I will probably never see again. (2006-08-10)
- This song is about a couple of people with their priorities in the right places; namely me and my girlfriend in high school. (2011-03-28)
- We’re going to play Broom People. We had a conference… we had a meeting. It was an outstanding meeting. Really, isn’t that what life is really all about, is meetings? We just had one; it was really great. Later I’ll share the notes. When I was fourteen years old, I had hair down to here. I looked terrible. Everybody told me how terrible I looked. And the more they told me, the more it made me want to look like that only even more so. [Audience cheers.] You say, ‘Woo,’ but I don’t know that it was really a healthy attitude for a fourteen year old to have. It was probably rooted in self-hatred. But, you know, it has its uses. But anyway, there was a girl who didn’t mind that my hair was grotesque and had bird nests in the back. And she and her tenderness and her two-door Honda Civic made my freshman year a great deal easier. I only ever wrote her one song, twenty years later, and this is it. (2011-03-30)
- This is a song about creating autonomous personal states in high school. (2013-06-12 - Majestic Theatre, Detroit)
- This is, loosely, a song about why I oppose abstinence-based education. (2017-11-07)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. "three foot high" (2013-06-12, 2021-08-06)