Tallahassee
Lyrics
Window facing an ill-kept front yard
Plums on the tree heavy with nectar
Prayers to summon the destroying angel
Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector
And you
You
Twin prop airplanes passing loudly overhead
Road to the airport two lanes clear
Half the whole town gone for the summer
Terrible silence coming down here
And you
You
There is no deadline
There is no schedule
There is no plan we can fall back on
The road this far can't be retraced
There is no punch line anybody can tack on
There are loose ends by the score
What did I come down here for?
You
You
Banter
- Can I tell you a story about Paul Stanley, one of the singers from KISS? [woo!] So there is rather famously a bootleg of Paul Stanley between-song banter that floats around. It's called "People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest". [Ed note: DO YOU GUYS LIKE TO GET LICKED???] I find Paul Stanley - people listen to it to laugh because he's yelling at these big crowds and it's a board recording so it sort of sounds like a guy yelling at a room to nobody. So, but, there's a real charm and humanity in the way that he's sort of trying to share ideas in his head with, y'know, 75,000 people. And at one point during what I theorize is a solo appearance at, like, Legends or something, he tries to explain how, when you're recording a song in the studio, you have your ideas about, ah, people are gonna hear this and flip the fuck out. They're gonna like that. And then other parts that you think are just connecting links between the good anthemic choruses and then it turns out that the parts you didn't think are that exciting are the ones that crowds like, and the other parts are the ones they're sitting through waiting to get to the part that you didn't think was so exciting. But the way that Paul Stanley puts this is he says [reasonable Paul Stanley impression]: "Sometimes the parts that you think are the cool parts are cool, but then the other parts that you're not thinkin' about, turn out to be the cool parts!" [laughter] And the whole reason I'm telling this story is that I do not think of Tallahassee as a real crowd pleasing song. And the last - but I mean, I wanted to play it because I've always been really fond of it, and I'm moving over to keyboard, and we played it in DC and it sounded kinda good, and then last night, I was like, I'm feeling a little tired tonight but man, Tallahassee, and it's like, it's shaping up to be the one that surprisingly rises up, with no yelling or me jumping up and down, and it's great. (2013-06-05 - Maxwell's, Hoboken)
- This song is about a couple of people who are getting ready to embark on a very special journey together…. toward a lawyer’s office. (2014-06-17)
Live Performances
Footnotes