Extraction Point

Lyrics

You never learn to tell the difference between
The probable projections and the best parts of the dream
The fragments that stick with you, the ones you really feel
Those parts aren't real

But high in the cold Midwestern air
They shimmer before us there
Almost out of reach but not quite
Stay up thinking about it all night
Waited so long for days like these
I'm tired of living on my knees

Pull your hair back tight, head right for the extraction point
And if you don't hear from me let them all go free

I'm on the Kennedy Expressway at dawn
Don't know where we got this car from
I'm driving with the fog lights on
The angles you don't plan for, the things you might have missed
Those things exist

But under the waxing winter sun
I feel like we're almost gone
Just pick a lane and drive right through
Headed off to freedom with you
Dreams of the future up in the front of my mind
Leave a couple dozen bodies behind

Pull your hair back tight, head right for the extraction point
And if you don't hear from me let them all go free

Banter

This is a song from the new album, so there'sa lot of dead people in it. [cheering] You don't even get to meet a one of them before they die, they're just bleeding bodies on the floor of a warehouse in Chicago. And you may ask, why did they die? For nothing. For nothing. Did their lives have meaning? Probably to the people who loved them, but otherwise, no. They're what you call blocking figures. The meanest thing I've ever said on mic. (2022-08-28 The Broadberry)
This is a song about a special kind of love. Oh yes, can only be shared by people who've had to dispose of a number of human bodies together. Nothing like cooperation. Nothing like skin in the game. (2022-09-17 Tulips)
This is a kind of a love song with a pretty high body count. (2024-04-05 Haw River Ballroom)
That song [Murder at the 18th St. Garage] only has one dead body in it, but this one has a few more. (2024-04-12 The Palace)
This is a love song. But it was on Bleed Out. Which had a certain kind of a guiding principle to it, which is that a lotta people have to die. Preferably one or more per song. In this song, considerably more. It's called Extraction Point. (2024-04-15 Washington's)
JD: Mental note, Peter, giant crowd pop for Make You Suffer in Denver. [crowd goes delightfully bonkers] That gives me a banter idea. You know, Peter, I understand in Denver they like to suffer.
Peter: That's, that's what it seems like to me.
JD: And then a tour shirt instead of having the city names, it just says Suffer on them. Suffer, Colorado. Suffer, Illinois. This is a song with a bunch of dead people in it. But two people who feel quite alive in the moment. (2024-04-16 Gothic Theatre)
If you'll indulge me for a moment, there's a thing that Greg Allman says on an Allman Brothers tape from '71. That I can't say truthfully, but I wanna say it anyway. We'd like to play a song that Dickey Betts wrote. That's the whole joke. Nah, that's, generally speaking, if there's a dead body in an Allman Brothers song, there's only the one dead body. And they had to die because of extenuating circumstances. This one has a lot more dead bodies, and you can't really call it extenuating when you yourself engineered them. (2024-04-17 Gothic Theatre)
This is a song about a hostage situation, sort of. Are they really hostages if they're not gonna make it? That's the question this song investigates. Let the record reflect that I got my drummer with that one. (2024-08-04 Filene Center at Wolf Trap )

Commentary

“To me, in some ways it's a tribute to a band called Silkworm. Their songs are all very cinematic. They're often voiced by a narrator, but who seems to be situated within a specific context. That's basically what I have always done, but mine usually exists more in a folk context, whereas this is much more of a rock song. What I really like about it is there's something that just finished happening and you have to put together the details of what it was. And it looks like it was pretty gnarly, but the song is pretty, it's triumphant. I wasn't sitting there trying to write a Silkworm pastiche, but I do think it comes out showing some clear signs of its pedigree. Silkworm is one of the best bands who ever existed.” (JD, Album commentary on Apple Music)

Live Performances

Footnotes

The curator of this website humbly recommends 2024-04-12 and 2024-04-17 for an excellent saxophone solo.