“If there ever was a time/You faded from my mind/It’s gone with the wide Missouri.”
“Missouri” (preview the track above!) is possibly my favorite song on the new album. Sean Cleary asked me if it was about the “channelization of the Missouri River.” Well, sort of, but more broadly it just tells the old story of the perils of human aspiration — Titanic set in St. Joe (or a town a lot like it!). Here are a few more thoughts on what the lyrics of this song are about. —Simon
If you’ve ever heard the beautiful folk tune, “Shandendoah,” then you know that “the wide Missourah” has a rich a history in song. I tried to capture some of that same homesick yearning in this tune.
The song tells the calamitous story of a river town much like St. Joe — set “beneath the hills of Nodaway” — that got rich by developing industry along the river shore. In the end the town’s fortunes are dashed by what could either be a natural or economic disaster — the lyrics don’t specify:
“But the iron gears of fate/Pause at no one’s gate/And the winds from Dakota came rushing down.”
St. Joe is a town filled with ghosts of the past. Whatever went on here a century ago is still so mysteriously vivid in the architecture and streets. And it’s so ripe for musical inspiration.