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Click to see lyrics, or scroll down to read the stories behind the songs...
Northern Whiskey Syndicate (2004, Dead City Records)
Endless Hours
Golden State Promises
Hard Rain
Last One Standing
I Didn't Know
Trouble
Volstead 33 (2005, Engine Plant Records)
Reckoning
Rossiter
Killing Time
Flood Plain
Straightline
Battlefield Dreams
No One to Blame
Losing Out
Splice the Main Brace (2007)
Steering
Family Tree II
Things I've Seen
California Days
Bootlegger
Black Tags
6 Pack
45th Parallel
The lyrics to most Northern Whiskey Syndicate songs spring from stories or incidents, either personal or historical. The NWS song writing process involves a lot of experimentation around a basic idea. All members contribute and flesh out the framework to make the song what it is. Anyone who has seen us live knows that we are not a chatty band on-stage, and we tend to shy away from the potential audience-losing tactic of long song explanations before launching into our thing. But we do get questions occasionally about what some of songs mean or what they are based upon, so here are a couple insights into the mind of NWS.
Endless Hours is a song about a soldier who fought in the bitter, mostly unknown campaign in the Aluetian Islands of Alaska in WWII. After the brutal action to re-capture the islands, this soldier stays on and lives in this land of harsh beauty where he spends his days re-living the war's horrors and waiting for the return of his love. The idea came from reading a National Geographic magazine in the dentist's office. It had an article about the Aleutians and one of the photos showed a weathered old man gazing out a window at the harbor. The caption described him as a veteran of WWII who stayed to make Dutch Harbor his home. Truly a picture worth a thousand words, or in this case, a couple dozen.
Golden State Promises is about a man returning to his midwest roots after a failed attempt at making a life in California. It is a road song; a sequel of sorts to the song Califonia Days.
Trouble is a straight-out beer brawl of a song in story and music. It was written before the band was formed so its theme was not dictated by our name....the music (as sometimes happens) was stumbled on while I was trying to figure out how to play another band's song. In this case I was attempting to play the House of Freaks "King of Kings" and was fairly close to getting the hang of it when I was fishing for a chord and the whole mess veered off into what Trouble eventually became.
Last One Standing was written while bed ridden. I was forced to do nothing but lie in bed for 4 days as the result of a back injury and I ended up reading Larry McMurtry's "Lonsome Dove". The powerful imagery of the plains was so strong that it drove the lyrics of a love song I was trying to write.
Hard Rain wrote itself, more or less, after the first line. And the first line came after I drove up to work and saw a small abandoned factory with a tree growing up the front wall and knee-high weeds coming up through the cracks in the pavement. The line "the factories in town are being re-claimed by the land" appeared in my head and that pretty much launched the song. A well-worn theme, I know, especially the Farm Aid concerts, but valid never-the-less. It is also an early attempt to incorporate harmonica in our music.
I Didn't Know was an attempt to lighten up a bit, and this song was one in which all of us had a fairly equal hand in the writing of lyrics and arrangement of the music. A fun song to create, and to play.
Rossiter is a personal song; the story of the Anderson family's migration from the Pennsylvania coal town of Rossier to Detroit. My grandfather was one of 7 boys born in the decade straddling the turn of the last century and they were coal miners in Rossiter, PA. There they lived as many immigrant families of the era lived: in over-worked poverty. One brother was killed in a mine explosion, another committed suicide. The injustice of the coal company-dominated life and the humiliation of being subjected to what amounted to laws authored and enforced by a private concern that trumped the constitution led to a long and painful strike in the mines. After enduring several months in a tent in the miner's colony, the family pooled its resources and came to Detroit to start anew in the factories of Ford, GM & Chrysler....and the keyboards in this song we recorded by Kevin's (then) 13 year-old daughter, Bridget.
Flood Plain: a song about friendships. Hopes & dreams, some realized, some missed. An old college friend of mine with whom I'd lost touch called one night out of the blue and we talked for a long while. By the end it was as if we'd never lost contact. The song was written in one sitting right after we hung up.
Killing Time is simply a song about a man consumed by his love to the point where everything else in his life is an impediment to what he really wants; that is, to be with his girl.
Straightline: a song cannibilized from bits & pieces of other, mostly failed, attempts of songs. But the theme is a re-visit of the workingman's life, the struggle to balance making a living with some semblence of fufillment on a creative or emotional level. Spend enough time in bars and you'll see folks staring into the bottom of a glass. Makes you wonder...similar theme in Reckoning, and both are musical attempts to put a little more force behind the songs, instrumentally.
Battlefield Dreams is an attempt to lighten up a little bit, a hopeful love song. The music was stumbled on, again, trying to copy another artist; in this case Buffalo Tom. The battlefield referred to is Gettysburg.
No One to Blame was written between the time the Volstead 33 CD first came out, and when it was re-recorded due to technical & creative issues. So there are a few dozen Volstead copies out there that do not have No One to Blame on it. It started out to be a song about hang-gliding, but then it veered off, as songs are wont to do, into other fields: in this case, images of my mother's death, the passing of time, travel, hope and redemption as told by the driver of a train. We tried having the full band but in the end, we went very spare in the arrangement, and Heather Case joined in to sing on the song.
Bootlegger remembers the Prohibition days with a special nod towards the setting of St. Clair, Michigan where rum runners had a rope & pulley system in place to move barrels under the surface of the St. Clair River between the towns of St. Clair & Corruna, Ontario. Some of our ancestors dabbled in rum running in those long forgotten days, but not being absolutely sure about the statute of limitations, we'd better stop here. My mother's father developed a home-made diving helmet that he used to walk along the bottom of the Detroit River to find contraband cargo jettisoned by rum runners as they were being pursued by the law. Not worried about the Revenuers catching Grandpa now, rest in peace. Gabe Doman played lead guitar on this track.
The 45th Parallel is half way between the North Pole and the Equator. There is a sign that marks its spot on the freeway in northern Michigan. After seeing that sign umpteen times, I figured there had to be a song in it somewhere. In this case, it is a man examining his life. All of us in NWS have an northern Michigan connection in our lives, past & present.
Things I've Seen: Fully realizing that most of our songs are serious, this was an effort to write about happy or frivolous things. But the urge to get serious was just too strong, so we tried juxtaposing a serious phrase with a trivial one. This is NWS' way of meeting an issue half-way. And it has a love theme woven into it, so if the overall product shades the serious side, at least it is an upbeat serious. Our thanks again to Heather Case for her harmony vocals.
Family Tree II: This song was another re-write of a song we dabbled with in our early days that just didn't quite stand up musically. After Matt Sayes joined the band it was pulled off the shelf & re-tooled with a Steve Earle-y feel. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory, somewhat short-storyish. The "II" is because the House of Freaks have a great song on their Tantilla album entitled Family Tree. H of F was a huge influence of mine, and Bryan Harvey and his family's murders are painful still. Likely always will be. Karlyn Miilu-Maxon played organ for us on this song.
Steering: When our original bassist, Steve Presti, left in March of 2006 we were fortunate enough to land Matt Sayes. This was the first original song we worked up with Matt, so it's the theme song, so-to-speak for NWS v.2. It's about life, like a lot of ours are, told in slightly oblique terms. The navigational theme was arrived at after reading the entire Hornblower series by Forrester over a period of a couple weeks in February.
California Days: This was written during the time Kevin & Sobie were in the Loaded 44s, the band prior to NWS. We carried it over to NWS and continue to play it live. It, too, is pretty literal. A portrait of 2 years on the west coast in a man's youth.
Black Tags: While travelling through Texas one summer a long while ago I noticed tent colonies around the outskirts of Houston, typically in the open spaces in the freeway ramp clover leafs. I asked a man at a gas station what those were about and he said "Them's those damn black tag people, down from Michigan takin' our jobs." It would have been hard to find a family in Michigan in the 80's rust belt days that didn't have someone out of work, deperate enough to travel a long way to find a job, and they often found hostility from the natives in whatever area they ended up finding work. The "black tags" were the license plates...after the colorful bi-centennial flag design that adorned Michigan cars for a couple years, the state went in the opposite direction by making the plates plain black. In the case of my family, we were hard hit and had several migrate south for work. Seems like Michigan is intent on re-visiting those dark days. This song was written while Kevin & Sobie were in the Loaded 44s, and like California Days, we had been playing it live with NWS and decided to re-record it.
PS: I left the gas station hurriedly, before the owner saw my license plate.
Endless Hours
Golden State Promises
Hard Rain
Last One Standing
I Didn't Know
Trouble
Volstead 33 (2005, Engine Plant Records)
Reckoning
Rossiter
Killing Time
Flood Plain
Straightline
Battlefield Dreams
No One to Blame
Losing Out
Splice the Main Brace (2007)
Steering
Family Tree II
Things I've Seen
California Days
Bootlegger
Black Tags
6 Pack
45th Parallel
The lyrics to most Northern Whiskey Syndicate songs spring from stories or incidents, either personal or historical. The NWS song writing process involves a lot of experimentation around a basic idea. All members contribute and flesh out the framework to make the song what it is. Anyone who has seen us live knows that we are not a chatty band on-stage, and we tend to shy away from the potential audience-losing tactic of long song explanations before launching into our thing. But we do get questions occasionally about what some of songs mean or what they are based upon, so here are a couple insights into the mind of NWS.
Endless Hours is a song about a soldier who fought in the bitter, mostly unknown campaign in the Aluetian Islands of Alaska in WWII. After the brutal action to re-capture the islands, this soldier stays on and lives in this land of harsh beauty where he spends his days re-living the war's horrors and waiting for the return of his love. The idea came from reading a National Geographic magazine in the dentist's office. It had an article about the Aleutians and one of the photos showed a weathered old man gazing out a window at the harbor. The caption described him as a veteran of WWII who stayed to make Dutch Harbor his home. Truly a picture worth a thousand words, or in this case, a couple dozen.
Golden State Promises is about a man returning to his midwest roots after a failed attempt at making a life in California. It is a road song; a sequel of sorts to the song Califonia Days.
Trouble is a straight-out beer brawl of a song in story and music. It was written before the band was formed so its theme was not dictated by our name....the music (as sometimes happens) was stumbled on while I was trying to figure out how to play another band's song. In this case I was attempting to play the House of Freaks "King of Kings" and was fairly close to getting the hang of it when I was fishing for a chord and the whole mess veered off into what Trouble eventually became.
Last One Standing was written while bed ridden. I was forced to do nothing but lie in bed for 4 days as the result of a back injury and I ended up reading Larry McMurtry's "Lonsome Dove". The powerful imagery of the plains was so strong that it drove the lyrics of a love song I was trying to write.
Hard Rain wrote itself, more or less, after the first line. And the first line came after I drove up to work and saw a small abandoned factory with a tree growing up the front wall and knee-high weeds coming up through the cracks in the pavement. The line "the factories in town are being re-claimed by the land" appeared in my head and that pretty much launched the song. A well-worn theme, I know, especially the Farm Aid concerts, but valid never-the-less. It is also an early attempt to incorporate harmonica in our music.
I Didn't Know was an attempt to lighten up a bit, and this song was one in which all of us had a fairly equal hand in the writing of lyrics and arrangement of the music. A fun song to create, and to play.
Rossiter is a personal song; the story of the Anderson family's migration from the Pennsylvania coal town of Rossier to Detroit. My grandfather was one of 7 boys born in the decade straddling the turn of the last century and they were coal miners in Rossiter, PA. There they lived as many immigrant families of the era lived: in over-worked poverty. One brother was killed in a mine explosion, another committed suicide. The injustice of the coal company-dominated life and the humiliation of being subjected to what amounted to laws authored and enforced by a private concern that trumped the constitution led to a long and painful strike in the mines. After enduring several months in a tent in the miner's colony, the family pooled its resources and came to Detroit to start anew in the factories of Ford, GM & Chrysler....and the keyboards in this song we recorded by Kevin's (then) 13 year-old daughter, Bridget.
Flood Plain: a song about friendships. Hopes & dreams, some realized, some missed. An old college friend of mine with whom I'd lost touch called one night out of the blue and we talked for a long while. By the end it was as if we'd never lost contact. The song was written in one sitting right after we hung up.
Killing Time is simply a song about a man consumed by his love to the point where everything else in his life is an impediment to what he really wants; that is, to be with his girl.
Straightline: a song cannibilized from bits & pieces of other, mostly failed, attempts of songs. But the theme is a re-visit of the workingman's life, the struggle to balance making a living with some semblence of fufillment on a creative or emotional level. Spend enough time in bars and you'll see folks staring into the bottom of a glass. Makes you wonder...similar theme in Reckoning, and both are musical attempts to put a little more force behind the songs, instrumentally.
Battlefield Dreams is an attempt to lighten up a little bit, a hopeful love song. The music was stumbled on, again, trying to copy another artist; in this case Buffalo Tom. The battlefield referred to is Gettysburg.
No One to Blame was written between the time the Volstead 33 CD first came out, and when it was re-recorded due to technical & creative issues. So there are a few dozen Volstead copies out there that do not have No One to Blame on it. It started out to be a song about hang-gliding, but then it veered off, as songs are wont to do, into other fields: in this case, images of my mother's death, the passing of time, travel, hope and redemption as told by the driver of a train. We tried having the full band but in the end, we went very spare in the arrangement, and Heather Case joined in to sing on the song.
Bootlegger remembers the Prohibition days with a special nod towards the setting of St. Clair, Michigan where rum runners had a rope & pulley system in place to move barrels under the surface of the St. Clair River between the towns of St. Clair & Corruna, Ontario. Some of our ancestors dabbled in rum running in those long forgotten days, but not being absolutely sure about the statute of limitations, we'd better stop here. My mother's father developed a home-made diving helmet that he used to walk along the bottom of the Detroit River to find contraband cargo jettisoned by rum runners as they were being pursued by the law. Not worried about the Revenuers catching Grandpa now, rest in peace. Gabe Doman played lead guitar on this track.
The 45th Parallel is half way between the North Pole and the Equator. There is a sign that marks its spot on the freeway in northern Michigan. After seeing that sign umpteen times, I figured there had to be a song in it somewhere. In this case, it is a man examining his life. All of us in NWS have an northern Michigan connection in our lives, past & present.
Things I've Seen: Fully realizing that most of our songs are serious, this was an effort to write about happy or frivolous things. But the urge to get serious was just too strong, so we tried juxtaposing a serious phrase with a trivial one. This is NWS' way of meeting an issue half-way. And it has a love theme woven into it, so if the overall product shades the serious side, at least it is an upbeat serious. Our thanks again to Heather Case for her harmony vocals.
Family Tree II: This song was another re-write of a song we dabbled with in our early days that just didn't quite stand up musically. After Matt Sayes joined the band it was pulled off the shelf & re-tooled with a Steve Earle-y feel. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory, somewhat short-storyish. The "II" is because the House of Freaks have a great song on their Tantilla album entitled Family Tree. H of F was a huge influence of mine, and Bryan Harvey and his family's murders are painful still. Likely always will be. Karlyn Miilu-Maxon played organ for us on this song.
Steering: When our original bassist, Steve Presti, left in March of 2006 we were fortunate enough to land Matt Sayes. This was the first original song we worked up with Matt, so it's the theme song, so-to-speak for NWS v.2. It's about life, like a lot of ours are, told in slightly oblique terms. The navigational theme was arrived at after reading the entire Hornblower series by Forrester over a period of a couple weeks in February.
California Days: This was written during the time Kevin & Sobie were in the Loaded 44s, the band prior to NWS. We carried it over to NWS and continue to play it live. It, too, is pretty literal. A portrait of 2 years on the west coast in a man's youth.
Black Tags: While travelling through Texas one summer a long while ago I noticed tent colonies around the outskirts of Houston, typically in the open spaces in the freeway ramp clover leafs. I asked a man at a gas station what those were about and he said "Them's those damn black tag people, down from Michigan takin' our jobs." It would have been hard to find a family in Michigan in the 80's rust belt days that didn't have someone out of work, deperate enough to travel a long way to find a job, and they often found hostility from the natives in whatever area they ended up finding work. The "black tags" were the license plates...after the colorful bi-centennial flag design that adorned Michigan cars for a couple years, the state went in the opposite direction by making the plates plain black. In the case of my family, we were hard hit and had several migrate south for work. Seems like Michigan is intent on re-visiting those dark days. This song was written while Kevin & Sobie were in the Loaded 44s, and like California Days, we had been playing it live with NWS and decided to re-record it.
PS: I left the gas station hurriedly, before the owner saw my license plate.