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“What the hell is this song?”

That’s not exactly the first question you want to ask yourself as a songwriter when you finish a lyric.

But for some reason with this tune, I wasn’t fazed.

It WAS what I wanted it to be: A fever dream.

Patriotism, patriarchy, terrorism, ecstasy, eden, redemption, memorialization, influence, causality.

There’s a Venn Diagram of all these things somewhere in that fever dream.

And I guess this song was me trying to hit bullseye.

(Lyrics Below)

LYRICS

It’s snowing in the garden, the guard is sleeping at the gates

And me and my unbroken chainlink breaths, we wait and wait and wait

And right from wrong, oh they bend again, like an arrow in the wind

Crying let me in, let me in, by the hair of your chinny chin chin

Snow sleeps on his tactical jacket sleeves

Snow sleeps on the brim of his cap

Snow sleeps on the musket barrel that statue has aimed at his back as he naps

And lay me down, lay me down, lay me down; break my heart and lay me down

Lay me down in the practical heat of an actual friend

A father’s a broad-shouldered proverb

And a country’s a cop with a gun

Neither mean to do you any harm at first, but angel,

keep your wings where we can see ‘em, son, and no one will get hurt

A country’s like a father

A father’s like a fence

Ten thousand miles of barbed-wired around the Present Tense

Will you see me?

Will you see me see this through to the end?

Snow wakes from the spindly limbs of the tress

Snow yearns to return to the clouds

And all of these trees growing backwards to seeds

Swallow the shout: “Are you proud of me now?”

I feel like a baby, I ache like a man

I’m going in, I’m going in, I’m going in…

To the heart of a place where a new kind of grace can begin

A father’s a broad-shouldered proverb

And a country’s a cop with a gun

Neither mean to do you any harm at first, but angel,

keep your wings where we can see ‘em, son, and no one will get hurt

A country’s like a father

A father’s like a fence

Ten thousand miles of barbed-wired around the Present Tense

Will you see me?

Will you see me see this through to the end?

How it Got Made

If you’ve got an ear for chords, you might recognize Crow in the Snow is essentially the same as Sandra from my album Filament. That’s because during those sessions we tried a faster, full-band version of Sandra.

I loved the parts Anders, Arthur, and Dan recorded. But it wasn’t working with my lyrics and melody for Sandra. Too fast. Too much of a production for the direct but delicate story I was trying to convey in that song.

So I re-recorded Sandra as a proper acoustic folk song. Which left this cool instrumental track unused.

And why write one song when you can write two?

So I took this track home, added new words, a different tune, and a bunch of overdubs. After that I shipped all the files off to Peter Rodocker to help me make more sense of it! I think he did a great job keeping the mix “fever-dream-y,” but without slipping into chaos.

The one hook from Sandra that I kept is my falsetto oooos in the bridge, so that might sound familiar.

Thanks for listening!

CREDITS:

Music by Chris Robley, Daniel Adlaf, Anders Bergstrom, and Arthur Parker

Lyrics by Chris Robley

Engineering for the basic band tracks by Bob Dunham

Early production by Bob Dunham and Edwin Paroissien

Acoustic guitars engineered by Jeff Stuart Saltzman

Additional engineering by Chris Robley

Mixed and mastered by Peter Rodocker

Drums & percussion by Anders Bergstrom

Keyboards and synths by Daniel Adlaf

Bass by Arthur Parker

Violin by Margaret Gibson Wehr

Guitars, vocals, noise, autoharp, harmonica, samples, loops by Chris Robley