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Role in the Album Concept

Track 2 on In/Stability, and the first with vocals, is “Place Beyond the Pines.” As I mentioned in my last post – each track on this album represents a certain element of my world falling apart. “Place Beyond the Pines” represents my environment. I’ve lived in Schenectady County most of my life and spent 2012 – 2017 living in the City of Schenectady itself. “Place Beyond the Pines” takes you on a tour of that city; not to different landmarks, but to the different experiences of its residents.

The story spends the most time with the man “sippin’ whiskey, soaking chin and goatee,” the pregnant teenager contemplating suicide and the crack addict under the care of her religious brother, believing only God can save them. These are fictional tales but inspired by real stories and observations. Schenectady truly is a “rabid rehab capital,” with many residents having been “shipped upstate” to get clean. Of course, the system fails many of these individuals, and they resume their old lifestyle in a new setting.

Etymology

“Schenectady” is the Mohawk word for “beyond the pines,” which is where both this song and the movie of the same name got its title. Ryan Gosling was originally going to provide featured vocals, but I just kept showing him the scene from Training Day with his wife’s bare ass and grunting until he got annoyed and quit mid session.

Production

The beat was produced by The Rawhide Kid. If memory serves, it was among the beats he sent me when I was looking to record “Cold Turkey.” His filename was “surreal thoughts.” However, I slowed the original tempo by 5%. It was important to me that this song maintains a very specific pace and the original tempo was just a little too rushed. It is perhaps my most monotoned delivery ever as I intended to serve the role of the narrator and nothing more.

Call Back to Alternate Ending

As I mentioned in the In/Stability post, many of the songs call back to my album Alternate Ending in some way. This one does not directly do so, however the general concept is actually how I planned to start that album. I had written a song called “Dirty Water” which followed a similar concept but in a rural setting. It did not come across with the intensity that I wanted so I never recorded it. Once I came up with “S.W.A.T.” I scrapped the “Dirty Water” concept entirely. So while the song does not reference Alternate Ending, writing it did put me in a similar mind-state.

I never do this….but here are some of the lyrics from “Dirty Water” written in 2007. A huge notable difference is that “Dirty Water” is first-person while “Place Beyond the Pines” narrates the struggle of others.

Now that I've got my cap and gown
I'm ready to pack my crap and hop town
You know I think it's great but it just ain't fun
Let me describe what I'm getting away from
It's true that the water barely costs shit
Because you can't drink it right out of the faucet
If you've got a white sink, watch it swirl down
It's got a tint and the color is brown


It's durty durty like the deep south
If you don't want E Coli, keep out
When the Poland Spring bottles and my cash is depleted
I can't quench my thirst even if I need it
I can't cool off so I do my job shirtless
Every block got about one house where water's dirtless
Only because of a device they purchased
Without it paying water bills seems to be worthless
This town is a circus, local government's laughin'
Our medical bills are the sideshow attraction


Rawhide Report

I sent The Rawhide Kid the full album and he stroked my ego a whole bunch because that’s where my male g-spot is. Part of his feedback was his track-by-track reactions. I’ll be including them in each Rootbeer Report because they made me feel good and because you could all stand to see what encouragement from a good friend, partner and lover looks like.

I always really loved the concept of this song, ever since you told me about it a while ago; I feel like it was back in 2014 or so. Has it really been that long that this song has been gestating? I really think your lyricism is on point here, and the imagery those lyrics create is very vivid. I like how your verses are like an anthology in that they tell different parts of the same story. I also like how dark this song is in a real-world way. I also wanted to make special note of the fact that the end verse flows seamlessly into [REDACTED] which I know is intentional but it’s still impressive to me.