I received a text from my mom sometime during my last semester of college. She and Dad were at a Zac Brown Band show, ailment who I believe is country’s answer to a more modern Dave Matthews Band. They were having fun, order the text said, and they had just stumbled upon a group of fraternity guys playing actual, “light beer in red Solo cup” beer pong in the parking lot. Naturally, photo shoots emerged from the encounter, but with zero irony as my parents were outfitted with cowboy hats and (barely) wrapped their arms around one guy’s impossibly massive shoulders. I sat for ten minutes to possibly an hour just staring at one image; a shot of my father soberly grinning as he tried spreading his fingers around one guy’s muscle-bloated, celtic-cross-tattooed bicep.
It was in this moment that I realized that Dad and I might’ve officially severed the last ties between our common grounds in music.
In the slow decay post-Boy Scouts/moving out/joining college radio, our list of shared interests were dwindling fast, but my father and I best related to each other by 1) music and 2) craft beer excluding IPAs for him. Knowing we couldn’t just talk about beer and our jobs every single time I came home, I decided to salvage our musical relationship post-college to make sure that his wisdom and our music relationship didn’t die at the hands of pop banjos leading a chorus about southern gentleman caricatures. My solution? Essentially, what any great paternally-related team does on television to stay close: start a father and son company.
Every other week, I send my father a relatively new song. We discuss what was heard. Sure, he often uses the term “harmony” a bit liberally/incorrectly, but he’s my dad and he gives pretty sage, unaffected wisdom when it counts. Well, excluding when he calls Sufjan Stevens “soufflé”, but that’s beside the point…
#1: Sufjan Stevens – “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”
Dad: Very Simon & Garfunkel… It almost sounds like two people singing, but it’s just the rever—is that what it’s called here, reverb?
Tim: Well, sometimes you’d call it reverb, but I think he just tracked his vocals twice.
D: He’s a “champion that got drunk to get laid”? Hmm… somewhat interesting lyrics, I guess. “A lonely vampire inhaling his fire”? Don’t know what that’s about.
Moments later…
D: [hysterical laughing] “Casper the Ghost” and the “shadow of the cross”? He is mixing up freakin’ cartoons with religion?! And vampires…
T: I thought that last half of the song was incredibly sad. You think that’s funny?
D: He is just a young man, very conflicted.
The song concludes, although so quietly that both of us aren’t sure if it actually did.
T: Alright, it’s done, yeah. Was it good? Good-ish? We can listen to it again if you’d like…
D: The lyrics were just…I was more interested in the tune initially. I love the tune! Yeah, it was very haunting, very Simon & Garfunkel. I’m blanking on the song they did, what the hell’s the “take me to Canterbury” song? Something “fair”.
T: “Scarborough Fair”!
D: Yeah, that’s it. The way this guy mixed that track though, I thought that was awesome. I’d love to hear more of that. This guy’s a good singer, but the lyrics though…what the hell does Casper the Ghost have to do with the cross?
T: I can tell you what I’ve heard the song’s about if that helps. I read a piece that his mother died in the last couple years without them having a very stable or enduring relationship. Essentially, she abandoned the family when he was a kid because of her mental instability and alcoholism, so he only saw her during occasional summers. But he still wanted his mother, even though she was very absent.
D: Okay, yeah. Conflicted, like I said.
T: He usually layers his songs with banjos and strings and electronic noise, so to have him paired down to one guitar is especially haunting. It’s kind of bummer music, you know?
D: I’d put on a lava lamp to this or something like that. Like, if I was your age. It was very, like, “Whoa, dude.” [makes wavy hand gestures] Now that you mention the reason behind the lyrics, though, it’s not a feel-good song at all.
T: Does that make it bad then?
D: Well, a) I don’t think people understand the story behind it because b) the tune is more clear than the words. I mean, songs should be about something. To me, a song is a story. I didn’t really catch his story until the end though and, of course, now more so with what you told me.
T: I think anyone naturally would struggle writing a song about death, especially about a mother. Like, ‘Is this original?’ ‘Are my feelings valid to display here?’
D: I think I would use more direct lyrics… like, I’m still curious what Casper the Ghost has to do with all of this.
T: Who were your sad, “lava lamp” bands when you were in that late teen/early twenties’ age?
D: Uh, I’d say Don McLean, the “American Pie” guy. That’s not a sad song, but he had some real sad, chill out songs. Simon and Garfunkel too.
T: So what would your advice be to our deeply conflicted friend Sufjan? And additionally, to the Allston Pudding people feeling all sad and lost to this LP?
D: I think, uh, if that is indicative of his songwriting, keep it up. Try to work on the lyrics a little bit. I think he should vary from the sad stuff. Same with the listeners. After a while, it does become a bummer, listening to whole albums of that kind of stuff. Every now and then, you wanna listen to a song like that, but you don’t want to become melancholy. Yeah, that’s it; listen to Soufflé, but don’t be melancholy.
This interview was edited for length, clarity, and a redacted statement about youthful inhibition that my dad was kinda embarrassed about.