Heel Turn 2

Lyrics

Get stomped like a snake
Lie down^[1] in the dirt
Cling to my convictions
Even when I get hurt
Be an upstanding well-loved man about town
In your child’s mind that's how it goes down

But I tried
The losing side
I don't want to die in here
I don't want to die in here

Drift down into the new dark light
Without any reservations
You found my breaking point
Congratulations^[2]
Spent too much of my life now trying to play fair
Throw my better self overboard, shoot at him when he comes up for air

Come unhinged
Get revenge^[3]
I don't want to die in here
I don't want to die in here

Stay good under pressure
For years and years and years and years
President of the fan club up there
Choking on his tears^[4]

Let all the trash rain down^[5]
From way up in the rafters
I'm^[6] walking out of here in one piece
Don't care what comes after

Drive the wedge
Torch the bridge^[7]
I don’t want to die in here
I don’t want to die in here^[8]

Banter

• There are times in your life where you say 'fuck it. I'm not going to do what's right anymore. I tried that for a while, what did it get me? Hard times!' So you think, this is going to be kind of traumatic to suddenly start doing wrong all the time. And maybe you, in your life, try a wrong thing or two and think 'Oh man everybody hates me now I can't do that'. Make some changes and seek the righteous path again. In professional wrestling, when you turn from a 'face', which is short for babyface, which means good guy to 'heel', which is short for heel, that means bad guy, that turn is total. And it is beautiful, because you see somebody just immediately go 'I was over here on the good side, but I'm going over to the bad side'. There is no episode four, where you see, you know, oh it was a gradual descent into evil. It was right in front of you! It was right there. Suddenly you see a guy go 'man, fuck it'. (2015-04-19
• So this is a song about a time that happens in your life. And it happens to you whether you're a wrestler or not. When you say, well, I was just trying to be the good guy here, I'm just trying to be a good guy, y'know? 'Cause it's important to you inside to be true to that better self, that you know is your core self, that you know that's who you really are. The babyface. The good guy. You know that's who you are down there. In the center, you're the good guy. But then sometimes, you feel like, well, I was the good guy and then they slapped me and I turned the other cheek, and they slapped that one too, and then I turned around and they hit me in the back of the head. How long do I gotta be the good guy for? When - when's my chance? When do I get to hit back? When do I get to reach into my belt and find some kind of a flat sap [?] or a razor or something. C'mon man! and you try to be nice, but at some point the concept of a level playing ground becomes important to you. And you say, well, you pick up whatever weapons happen to be at ringside, or whatever, and you look to the people who you thought were on your side, and they say, oh, you're cheating. And you go, well, yeah, the other guy was cheating! And they go, you're cheating. And you go, well, I don't care what you think. You turn heel. (2015-04-23)
• Sorry, I - you may or may not be able to tell, but the monitors are doing a constant hum that's pretty hard to work with. I know, you were thinking, this is part of Darnielle's master plan, to expose everyone to harsh noise. But that's not actually part of my master plan. There is an apocryphal version of the master plan that involves harsh noise exposure. That is heretical. That is a heretical master plan, that I do not support. I stand with the true, original master plan. As this song goes, there is no harsh noise component. (2015-05-27)
• There's a longish story about this one. Just to explain a thing, in professional wrestling, [cheering] this is going to take a long time. So I mean, I try always to see the good in all people, and to see things from people's point of view, but when someone tells me there's two types of people, I say, oh, I'm not going to trust you ever again. You can say there are at least two types of people, this I can respect. No fewer than two types of people. You're either an A or a B, no, I know that's not true. However, in wrestling there are two types of people. Which I think is why so many people who believe in the real world there are two types of people are continually stymied by believing this, and it turns out that things are more complicated, and this is frustrating, you can't reduce things to simple equations like that. And in fact, the more people, the more complexity, and [inaudible]. But you go to wrestling matches, and there are in fact two types of people. The good guys and the bad guys, and it's so comforting and lovely. You know the bad guy when you see him! He's way [longer?] than the other guy. You know the good guy when you see him, because he's not as interesting as the good guy! And the good guys are called baby faces, or faces for short. If you are a bad guy, and then you see the light someday and you grow to regret your evil deeds, you turn face, and you become a good guy. It's called a face turn. And if you are a good guy, and you hear the call of the wickedness that beckons from beneath the floor, that tells you to go get what's yours, that tells you there's something for you down there, and it belongs to you, and all you gotta do is open yourself up to the darkness and depths of evil, and you can have it. If you're a good guy, and you feel like that, you can turn heel. (2015-05-29)
• So, look here, I have to explain another wrestling thing to you. Because, I don't know how I know this, but I suspect there's some people in here who are not the biggest wrestling fans. I urge you to pursue a course of enjoying professional wrestling. It's so much better than amateur wrestling. You know, amateurs don't really know what they're doing. Professionals, they’re pros! They’ve got it nailed down. So anyway, the beauty of wrestling is that in life, you know, you meet somebody - maybe somebody in your own family or whatever - who you'd like to say, well, that's just a villain. That's an evil villain. Like, absolutely, monolithically just an evil villain. But then you think, well, no. We had some times that were special, you know, that were amazing. But the evil, evil villain was genuinely evil, but then we did some things and it's complicated. It's what makes your whole existence complicated because everybody you know is like that, right. There are no heroes, no villains. But you yearn in your spirit for the heroes and the villains. You would like to have somebody you could go, well, that's an asshole. I don't like that guy, 100%. I hate that guy. And this is the gift that wrestling gives us. You have the heels. Now they're complex, but the question of their good and their evil is not complex. Either they're bad or they’re good. Eventually, they boil down to that. You see the bad guy and you know that all he wants is to hurt the good guy. It defines him. His desire to wound and injure and cause the good guy to suffer. And the good guy, you see him, you don’t know much about him besides that he's good, because good is sort of less magnetic than evil. But one of the greatest things that can happen in wrestling is when the good guy - who's called a "face" which is short for "babyface" in the backstage parlance - when the good guy, in front of everybody, turns heel. Turns bad. And the reason it's great is because you can relate, right? You watch him and you go, oh man, he's decided he doesn't care if people hate him now. He's going to get what he wants. Neither you nor I will ever have that moment in our lives. It's just not going to happen. Because you do care if people hate you. [Audience member: No!] Yes, you do and you're always gonna. You can't rid yourself of that because if you do rid yourself of that, then you're a sociopath. Then you have major problems. So you have to live in the complex world. But in wrestling, we get to enjoy, vicariously, the sight of somebody going, I am going to embrace evil and get out of here alive and that's the only thing that matters in my entire life at this moment, in front of all these people. (2015-06-01)
• I always try not to repeat myself, which is why I've been talking less tonight, I know a fair number of you were probably at the Fillmore last night. So I don't want you to have to hear the same stories twice. However, for the benefit of people who don't know about this, I have to tell a story that will probably be somewhat similar to the one you heard when we played the same song last night. This is a song about heroes and villains. So in wrestling, a hero is called a "face", which is short for "babyface". And a villain is called a "heel", like the heel on your foot. And a thing that can happen in wrestling, that generally doesn't happen in your daily life is when a good person, who you know to be a good person, you've seen them around, maybe they're not your closest friend but you know them well enough to vouch for them - like, hey, I've been thinking about letting Dave house-sit for me, you know Dave, he's not gonna steal my stuff or let the cats go hungry. And you go, nah, man, I know Dave, Dave's a good dude, he loves cats. He'll feed your cat, take care of your house, Dave's a good man, God bless Dave. You vouch for Dave, I do. But then, let's say, you find out that Dave went over to the house and burned it to the ground. You would say, "Dave has turned heel. I thought that he was a face but in fact, Dave pursues evil for the sheer love of it." This is the beauty of heels. Heels do not wrestle evil because they think it's going to get them victories and titles. It doesn't. They always lose, they don't get what they want. They pursue evil for the sheer deliciousness of evil. For the most part. But you have to assume, that when you see them turn bad, that something happened to them somewhere along the line. You have to assume that they didn't actually just turn bad one day, because they were tired of feeling good about themselves and people liking them. No. You have to assume that somewhere inside, there was a kernel of resentment and anger and rage that, no matter who they tried to talk to about it, no one was hearing it because...you're not trying to hear about my resentment or rage, I'm a good guy. I have to turn heel in order for you to see what's actually inside me. (2015-06-02)
• I would like to talk to you about professional wrestling for a little bit. [cheering] In professional wrestling - the beauty of professional wrestling is that in your real life when someone does you wrong - a real wrong, not like, borrows 5 bucks or in my case, 25 bucks, and doesn't pay you back... I spent it. The money's gone, I can't pay you back. Sorry. The money's gone. - But a real wrong. A palpable harm. And somebody does you that, but generally speaking, it's not, y'know, Magneto. It's not - I don't think about Magneto and the movies. It's not Darth Vader. It's not, y'know, Satan. It's not someone who you go, well, he's just wrong all the time, [inaudible] be the victim of Wrong. It's your friend, or your family member, quite often, who's done you wrong, but you know they're a complex person with whom you have had good times! Who you know to be sometimes decent, except when they're not. This is extraordinarily difficult, which makes wrestling completely awesome. There's bad guys: what do the bad guys do? They do evil. They do evil. That's all they do. They're safe to hate, they don't have the complexity of - they're not ashamed of the bad things they do. Why would they be? It's how they are! Except for - occasionally, one of them will find it in his heart to suddenly do good. Right in front of everybody. He'll be doing evil, and then he will begin to do good. How can you tell the difference? Because he attacks the bad guys. [inaudible] That's called a face turn. Ít also happens the other way around. People who are squeaky clean, who you know to be good people, always good, helping people across the street, being nice to babies, always good, good people, smiling. And then right in front of you, they will attack the guy who's basically a carbon copy of himself. What has happened? Well, what happened he has turned heel. What has happened is he no longer had any interest in being good. His interest now is in pursuing evil. (2015-06-03 - The Mayan, Los Angeles)
• So also in wrestling, [laughter] I have more to say bout wrestling. There's this great thing in wrestling, that gives you what your inner child craves. Clean lines. You wanna know, is this person my enemy or my friend. You don't wanna know that they're your enemy sometimes and your friend other times. This is a terrible answer to your inner child. You get to divide the world into two camps: the good people and the bad people. And you will seek out the good people and shun the bad people. This is also the essential state of American politics right now. [rueful laughter from both the audience in 2015 and the transcriptionist in 2026] It's a huge, huge bummer. But in wrestling they give you what, down at your core, you're craving. You wanna know who I like, and who do I not like. You like the ones who seek justice and goodness, and you dislike, even if somewhere you actually like, the ones who do wrong. In wrestling they do wrong for the sake of doing wrong. That's the glory of the villains in wrestling. They don't do wrong to win, they don't win, they get disqualified. They get nothing. They don't get the belt, they don't get the victory, they don't get the love of the fans, they don't, y'know, there'll sometimes be a script where they get told they won't get paid if they cheat - this is just a script, they're getting paid. But at the same time, it's like, well, why do you, Abdul the Butcher, who's a villain in the 70s, why would you bother wrestling if you're never ever ever going to be awarded a victory or a belt or anything. Well, to make people bleed and suffer, is the answer they give. And you have to respect the purity of their intentions sometimes, you know, my intentions are not nearly so pure and understandable as why they're doing them. I do things because I enjoy them, but also because I feel a sense of obligation, all these things. Not so with the heel. The heel harms for the sake of harm. Evil for the sake of evil. Purity for the sake of its sweet sweet taste. One of the things that can happen in wrestling is a good guy can suddenly be posessed by evil. Beautiful to watch because the guy has to do it in front of an audience, so he has to telegraph all of this into the back rows, and you have to see him get the idea, I'm gonna cheat, I'm gonna stop being the good guy. I'm gonna be the bad guy. I'm tired of having to behave. I wanna get what I want. Which is vengeance. When a guy does that, that's called a heel turn. (2015-09-10)
• JD:There's only one left!
  Audience and Wurster: awwwwwwww
  Erin: Happens sometimes.
  JD: There's only one left on there!
  Audience, louder: noooooo!!
  JD: It is a song about professional wrestling...
  Audience, even louder: WOOOOO!!
  JD: I don't know how many of you are conversant in the general tropes of professional wrestling, this is not the amateur thing, people don't get to punch each other in the face. Which is obviously, it's a science, they have in professional wrestling what are called 'scientific wrestlers', I dunno if they still have these. In my day, the scientific wrestler was there to, [audience member yells] no, I'm gonna sing a song about professional wrestling. In the middle of a spiel about it. So, scientific wrestlers' function was to be the good guy who you pretend to admire, and then he just gets his face beaten to a pulp. Everybody like, applauds politely when the scientific wrestler grapples, and holds his hands on the other guy's shoulders and moves around. It looks like amateur wrestling. Nobody paid to see that, at the mid-south auditorium or whatever. The scientific wrestler wins if it's in the opening match and loses elsewhere. But a great thing happens, because he's been sort of played to be the hero the whole time. He comes in, he's very clean cut, the scientific wrestler, no tattoos, just togs and a good body, and at some point, with every scientific wrestler I think this is true, at some point he, like, gets punched in the face and gets up, punched in the face, gets up, and the bad guy punches him in the face with a closed fist, which is technically not a wrestling maneuver. But you do see a lot of it in wrestling. Curious to me. But at some point, he gets a really big haymaker to the jaw, and as it's falling he sorta reels, he stands there swaying, and he gets a look on his face, and you can see the look on his face in the highest rack, it needs no amplification. Because suddenly there is outrage in his eyes. Suddenly he's thinking, what good have the rules done me? Why am I adhering to a code nobody else even seems to know, or if they do know it, they spit on it before they get out of bed in the morning and then they come to this building to beat me as I, and I alone, adhere to the code of professional and scientific wrestling? And the rest of these people come in and they spit on me and they light me on fire, and they pull little objects out of their togs and hit me over the head with them. Why should I be the only person who follows the rules around here? If nobody else is following the rules, should I not then visit my vengeance upon these bad guys? (2021-08-06)
• Oddly enough, this is a song about how when people insist that you're a horrible villain, sometimes you turn around and say, you know what? What if I'm a horrible villain? What about this? (2021-08-08)
• Once in a while, the good guy will be standing in the centre of the ring, spotlight on him...taking punch after punch after punch weak on his knees...wobbling. You think he can’t take another punch but he can, you think he’s going to fall but he’s not, there’s too much power in the hero, in the good guy. He’s gonna die in there and then suddenly he reaches down, inside his being, and says; 'I’m going to cheat: I’m going to do what's wrong, I’m going to change - for the worse! (2021-08-26)
• You ever get tired of being good? You ever look at the people who don't care that they're not doing good, and feel a sort of weird envy: you don't wanna be like them -- because they're assholes -- but you do wanna be like them, so they can see that you, too, could be an asshole. (2021-12-17)
• [request from the crowd] Aw, I wish I knew how to play Etruscans. Etruscans is a fun song. No idea how that one goes. The version you know is the only time it was ever played. Which is how you know it's probably one of my best songs. THe best ones are the ones where you go, no, it's done there, I think, we'll never play that one anywhere. Wait wait wait, I like that tone. Say again? [someone yells something else, JD chastises them]. Yes? [audience member: Heel Turn 2!] By myself?!? [audience goes nuts affirmatively] Okay! [JD starts to play intro] Normally this is one of those dramatic live numbers with the whole band, a very long ending, that's not gonna be the case by myself. [intro continues] If you don't watch wrestling, that's okay. You don't have to watch anything you don't wanna watch. But a heel turn, if you don't know what it is, there's two kinds of people in wrestling. Faces and heels. Face is short for babyface. Does what it says on the tin. Babyface is beautiful. Everybody loves him. A heel, is on the back of your foot, it's dirty. It will kick you. Babyfaces do what they do, but every once in a while, they can't take it. And they turn heel.They usually do it in front of a camera. They get their money's worth. This is called Heel Turn 2. (2023-10-07)
• This is a song about professional wrestling. [woo!] It's about a guy making what's called a heel turn. You don't generally get to do them in real life, where you just say, 'I don't care what these peeople think, I hope they hate me'. You lean into it, right, the good guy who you liked for his goodness stands before you and says 'my goodness is gone, say goodbye to it in real time.' (2024-04-16
• [intro starts] Thank you so much, we have one more to play, I think. This is a song about professional wrestling. [woo!] In professional wrestling, you have your babyfaces, that's the good guys, and your heels, that's the bad guys. Every babyface is a heel waiting to happen. Sometimes it happens right in front of you, you would almost think it was planned. If you liked the babyface, when he turns heel, you feel something happen in the pit of your stomach, and if you hated the babyface when he was a babyface then you know that he has joined your number. (2024-04-17)

Live Performances

• 2015-04-18 - The Vic, Chicago
• 2015-04-19 - First Avenue, Minneapolis
• 2015-04-21 - Headliners, Louisville
• 2015-04-22 - The Wexner Center, Columbus (recording)
• 2015-04-23 - Mr. Smalls, Millvale (recording, video)
• 2015-05-26 - Gothic Theatre, Denver
• 2015-05-27 - Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City (recording)
• 2015-05-29 - The Showbox, Seattle (recording)
• 2015-05-30 - Wonder Ballroom, Portland OR
• 2015-06-01 - The Fillmore, San Francisco (with John Vanderslice - recording)
• 2015-06-02 - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco (recording)
• 2015-06-03 - The Mayan, Los Angeles (recording)
• 2015-06-04 - Pappy and Harriet's, Pioneertown
• 2015-06-08 - Kessler Theater, Dallas
• 2015-06-09 - Moody Theater, Austin
• 2015-09-08 - Off Broadway, St Louis (JD solo)
• 2015-09-09 - Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence KS (JD solo)
• 2015-09-10 - Vega, Lincoln NE (JD solo - recording)
• 2015-10-02 - Bijou Theatre, Knoxville
• 2015-10-03 - Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotts NC
• 2015-10-04 -
• 2017-06-01 The Fillmore
• 2021-08-06 The Orange Peel (recording)
• 2021-08-08 The Saturn (recording)
• 2021-08-19 Gothic Theatre
• 2023-10-07 Ace of Spades (JD solo)
• 2024-04-16 - Gothic Theatre, Englewood (recording
• 2024-04-17 - Gothic Theatre, Englewood (recording)

Footnotes