All Hail West Texas ^{1 2}

An interview dedicated entirely to All Hail West Texas and music that John enjoyed that was related to it can be found in the SPIN session, August 13, 2013. ↩

Despite the title, songs mention locations throughout Texas, including Austin (east and south of central) and Dallas (east) as well as locations in neighboring states. ↩

All Hail West Texas was reissued in 2013 by Merge, containing new liner notes, remastered tracks, and 6 additional songs (see below). Announcing the reissue, John said:

Getting the reissue together has been a really interesting project for me, because it involves going through old boxes of tapes, which necessarily means exhuming the corpses I became at several turns between then and now. All Hail was the last grinding burst of the machine on which I'd built whatever name I had at the time. It was recorded in the final frenzy of the boombox-era writing style (hit a stride, work absolutely every night until you write a song you don't like, sulk for a couple of days, start up again), though I'm hesitant to say final, because who knows, I still track demos on a couple of the working decks I still have and I have ~ideas~about restricting myself to demo'ing on tape for a season at some point, who knows, life's long, "seldom say never" remains my non-committal motto par excellence. It's the only album where one of the worktapes went missing not by accident (the fate of untold handfuls of worktapes) but because I made good on my generally-empty promise to myself to destroy stuff if I don't want to see it out in the wild at some point. In between the songs that made the album on the two surviving worktapes there's a lucky 7 that didn't make the cut, sometimes for technical reasons ("ran out of tape"), sometimes for artistic ones ("this chorus: what were you thinking?"). These songs have been transferred from the original cassettes and are now on the reissue as bonus tracks, mainly ones that fit into the former category. Several more I didn't transfer from the original cassettes at all, because after listening to them, it was learned that they kind of sucked. RIP, "Red Southern Curl," you are just plain not a good song.

There's more to tell, but most of it's in the new liner notes, and the rest of it's in this piece Matt Fraction wrote about it, which is legitimately all you really need to know.

Mountain Goats news. Requiem for Red Southern Curl. May 13, 2013, retrieved April 28, 2014. See also Resisting Bad Latin Jokes One Minute At A Time. July 23, 2013, retrieved April 28, 2014. ↩ ↩²

The Panasonic RX-FT500 was a cassette recorder as described above, used on many Mountain Goats tracks. It is no longer in manufacture. ↩

The Marantz PMD222 was another cassette recorder as described above, similarly no longer made. ↩

On the reissue, the date is listed as 1999. This paragraph is otherwise identical. ↩

Morbid Angel is a Florida-based death metal band. ↩

John Fowles was an English modernist and postmodernist novelist. The French Lieutenant's Woman, published in 1969, is a critically-acclaimed postmodern novel about a man's romance, simultaneously critiquing other Victorian period novels. ↩

The liner notes to All Hail West Texas are part of the informal series of Biblical references. ↩

A reference to Isaiah 45:23: "By Myself I have sworn; Truth has gone from My mouth, a word that will not be revoked: Every knee will bow to Me, every tongue will swear allegiance." This is stated very similarly to the line in Isaiah 45:23, which obviously references the same verse. Holman Christian Standard Bible, retrieved May 16, 2012. ↩

The text on the CD booklet and vinyl gatefold of the reissue is identical to the original, except for the changes to the prose poem (transcribed here), the absence of the final dedication paragraph, and the change of the date of authorship listed above. Accordingly, those two otherwise identical paragraphs describing the album are not retranscribed.

The reissue contains more text discussing the album, transcribed here below the prose poem. Further, it contains additional notes on each new song, which are included with each song rather than here. ↩ ↩²

Iowa State University. ↩

Banff is a town in Alberta, Canada, famous for its nearby beautiful national park and major outdoor film festival. ↩

A great version of this story is told at Zoop II, Farm Sanctuary, New York, June 13, 2009. ↩

Hy-Vee is a Midwest chain of supermarkets. ↩

Ampex is a major electronics company based in California which manufactured many pieces of professional recording equipment. ↩

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa is the pseudonym of Cyril Hoskin, an English plumber who claimed to be transmigrated by the spirit of a Tibetan lama. Despite being inaccurate representations of Tibetan Buddhist thought, he wrote numerous books on the occult. You Forever is a collection of lessons purporting to teach astral travel, see auras, and other similar paranormal things.

Rampa, Tuesday Lobsang (1990). You Forever. York Beach: Samuel Weiser. ↩

Hate Eternal is another Floridian death metal band. ↩

One of the major show-closing encore songs and one of the Mountain Goats' most popular tracks.

"This is a song about hope in your life. There is a magnificent Mark Eitzel song title, It Is Important Throughout Life to Proclaim Your Joy. It's also important to admit on occasion to the righteousness of your fury and the justness of your cause in the face of those who would do you wrong, and who would rob you of your youth, and who would ignore what's good and beautiful in you. And I know this is all corny platitude stuff, but I know people who got sent to places, and it sucked for them, you can't even say how bad it was. Kirk FitzPatrick, I remember when they sent you away, man, this is for you." — Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, February 25, 2009. See also Judge John Hodgman, Episode 98: All Dogs Go to Trial, Sketchfest, San Francisco, February 20, 2013.

"One of the earliest sources for inspiration for that song was a friend of mine who was dating another friend of mine, and he was going through the experience of being seventeen and being exposed to new ideas and coming into yourself as you do when you're a teenager, it's an incredible, magic time, there's nothing like it, you know — being exposed to literature and music and going, 'I am someone other than these people who made me'. Amazing, right. But he was Mormon, and his Mormon family was not down with where he was going, you know, and like a lot of Mormon families in the '80s they thought, 'How can we fix this?' So one day, his girlfriend called me, and said, 'They took him away.' And I said, 'So where — what are you even talking about?' 'He's in Provo.' Provo, Utah. We were in Southern California. That's the Moon, you know. He was gone, and he couldn't get out until he was 18. Now, he happens to have turned out great, he's a professor of philosophy, you know, but I thought how many people must have had their hopes crushed by these people who are trying actually to restore their version of hope to them." — City Arts and Lectures, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, February 24, 2009

He further clarifies at City Arts and Lectures that while he's inspired by his Mormon friend, Jeff and Cyrus aren't intended to be Mormon, and he wants people to be able to project their story on them.

There is a wonderful dedication to this song sung at Berbati's Pan, Portland, October 3, 2003, but since it's not relevant to understanding the song, you'll have to go listen to it yourself. ↩

The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton is part of the informal series of Biblical references. ↩

Denton is the county seat of Denton County in Texas, located just northwest of Dallas. ↩

Often sung with alternate names or with the caveat, "But the top three contenders / Some of which have now been used", or "Which were later ripped off", occasionally with joking antagonism of the Killers especially. Some other band names used are The Poets and Corpulent Mortuary. Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, February 25, 2009; Opalis, Norman, Oklahoma, November 13, 2002; 40 Watt Club, Athens, Georgia, August 10, 2006; Gold Student Center, Claremont, December 2, 2006; Bluebird Theater, Denver, October 17, 2008; American Theater Company, Chicago, May 16, 2010; Mission Theater, Portland, June 25, 2012. ↩

Learjet is a manufacturer of private luxury airplanes. ↩

The pentagram, or five-pointed star, particularly when inverted, has long been a symbol for Satanism and the occult in general. ↩

Occasionally sung, "And this is how Cyrus got sent to the school in Utah", further emphasizing the origin of the song being about John's childhood friend being sent away by his Mormon parents. Also sung as Colorado. Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, February 25, 2009. Bluebird Theater, Denver, October 17, 2006. ↩

These lines are often sung en masse, with John shouting, "Sing it!" before the first "Hail Satan". Sometimes he exhorts the crowd to sing for the entire song. For example, see the Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, February 25, 2009; 40 Watt Club, Athens, Georgia, August 10, 2006. ↩

The "Hail Satan" lines were ad-libbed at time of recording.

"[It] didn't feel quite done. I never wrote 'Hail Satan' on the paper I was writing it on, it just seemed like there was something more to say. And I'm playing it and I'm like, 'How do I feel right now? Hail Satan is how I feel right now.' ... I can tell you what that means in that song. That means, all the things you tell young people they have to feel? Fuck you. All those things that you tell young people that they have to be, you know. All the ways in which you try to make up for your own failure through the people whose dreams you should be guarding and cherishing. Go die with those. Satan can eat you." — City Arts and Lectures, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, February 24, 2009. See also SPIN session, August 13, 2013; NPR interview, August 10, 2013.

"I hold with the Gnostics who say that there are two Satans, and one can't help you, and he's bad and is the cause of illness and disease and pain. And the other is he who resists, and he who stands against those that would hold you back, from the pain that would keep you from advancing, and that is who we will now worship." — Zoop II, Farm Sanctuary, New York, June 14, 2009

"Hail Satan" is also sometimes sung with different epithets, such as "Hail sweet prince of all flesh". Judge John Hodgman, Episode 98: All Dogs Go to Trial, Sketchfest, San Francisco, February 20, 2013; Bottletree, Birmingham, Alabama, June 22, 2013. ↩

"And Hal said, 'Did you hear about Dave?' 'No, no, what happened to Dave, Hal the One-Legged Hot Dog Vendor?' And he said, 'Oh, man, he blew it.' I've never forgotten that. 'What?' 'Well, he got a bunch of money again and he went over to Amsterdam, and he was having a really good time and when it was time for him to come back he showed up at the airport really, really high, and they arrested him.' Here ends the story of my friend Dave, as far as anybody knows. Disappeared into a Dutch prison in 1986. In 2001, I remembered him because less than a year before I met him in our druggie community he had been a track runner from Texas, All-American, All-State." — Swedish-American Hall, San Francisco, June 28, 2012

"I don't really do protest songs, but this is one, kind of. Mandatory sentencing never works." — Somerville Theater, Somerville, June 16, 2014 ↩

Running back is a backfield position in American football whose major function is to accept handoffs of the football from the quarterback and then run, or rush, the ball to gain yardage. They also block and receive passes. They can be either halfbacks or tailbacks, who are the primary runners, or fullbacks, who generally block for the halfback or tailback. ↩

To rush the ball in American football means to gain yards by running with the ball, as opposed to passing. 8 and 1/3 yards per carry is a tremendous statistic, only two professional football players have ever beat that statistic in a season in the entire history of the National Football League, Michael Vick in 2006 and Beattie Feathers in 1934. ↩

This line is taken directly from the third verse of The Notorious B.I.G.'s top 10 charting hit hip hop song Big Poppa:

How you living', Biggie Smalls
In mansion and Benzes
Givin' ends to my friends and it feels stupendous
Tremendous cream, fuck a dollar and a dream
Still tote gats strapped with infrared beams

John has confirmed this homage.

Mountain Goats forums. WANTED: Most impressive tMG rhymes. August 6, 2008, retrieved July 18, 2014. ↩

Sometimes sung with other names, for example, Jason Standaforth Donahue. Zoop II, Farm Sanctuary, New York, June 13, 2009. ↩

Red-eye refers to flights departing late at night and arriving early in the morning. ↩

Dallas/Fort Worth is a major international airport in the Dallas region, one of the busiest and largest in the world. ↩

Taipei is the capital of Taiwan, the Republic of China. ↩

Mexicali is the capital city of Baja California, Mexico, located at the Mexico – United States border. ↩

Zimbabwe is a country in southern Africa, bordered by Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, and South Africa. ↩

Georgia is a country on the eastern side of the Black Sea bordered by Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, independent since 1991. ↩

East St. Louis is a city in Illinois located across the Mississippi from St. Louis. ↩

Paris is a major city and the capital of France. ↩

"This is a love song about a couple of people and the machine that unites them." — VPRO session, Amstel Festival, December 7, 2002. See also Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, October 23, 2002; Will's Pub, Orlando, April 9, 2003; Mains d'Oeuvres, Mofo Festival, Paris, June 27, 2003;

"So, this is a song about alcohol and a motorcycle, it's called Jenny." — Empty Bottle, Chicago, March 8, 2002

Sometimes John introduces this in a bleaker fashion, but I generally think this an actual love song; he has referred to it as "jubilant". I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, season 1, episode 4: Jenny; November 9, 2017. See also Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, May 26, 2004; Black Cat, Washington, DC, October 11, 2004; Bowery Ballroom, New York, October 1, 2006.

For more information about Jenny as part of the greater Mountain Goats canon, see the Jenny series. ↩

An alternate version of Jenny was released on the All Hail West Texas reissue. John wrote:

Slower, a little more sentimental, some differences in the phrasing. Why the other take's better: it just is. Thing I learned in the remaster: it sounds like this is in DADGAD, or maybe EADGAD. I've played it in standard tuning from the first time I ever played it live.

All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes. ↩

The name choice is likely an allusion to the 19th century essayist and poet Leigh Hunt's famous poem Jenny kiss'd me:

Brenna: @mountain_goats Hi John! I've been reading the new biography of James Wright lately, and am wondering if the Jenny he utilizes in his poetry bears any parallel to the Jenny found in your lyrics? (E.g. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47744/to...

John: I'll tell you a secret: it's more Leigh Hunt than anybody else

The poem in full reads:

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

Thank you tremendously to Mairead Beeson (and Brenna above) for discovering this!

Mountain Goats Twitter, February 6, 2018, retrieved February 8, 2018.

Quiller-Couch, Arthur, editor (1900). The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poem #592. Available via Project Gutenberg, retrieved March 22, 2018. ↩

Jenny is part of the Jenny series, informal series of Biblical references, and informal series of demos. ↩

Ranch-style housing is an American architectural style popularly built in the years after World War II notable for being single-story, having long roofs, simple floor plans, and attached garages, among other characteristics. ↩

Kawasaki is a Japanese motorcycle manufacturer. John has clarified that the type of motorcycle he was imagining was something along the lines of a ZX900, a sport bike. William Caxton Fan Club, ok now if you hadn't actually thought about..., retrieved April 18, 2014.

Occasionally, this is sung with an alternative manufacturer, such as Bultaco. Apolo, Barcelona, October 19, 2013. ↩

Also sung, "So the new orange sun..." Mains d'Oeuvres, Mofo Festival, Paris, June 27, 2003; Black Cat, Washington, DC, October 11, 2004; Amoeba Music, San Francisco, August 22, 2006. ↩

Also sung, "We were the two things in the galaxy..." Black Cat, Washington, DC, October 11, 2004; Amoeba Music, San Francisco, August 22, 2006. ↩

A fault line is a crack in a body of rock, particularly when referring to the large fractures formed at the borders of tectonic plates. ↩

Las Vegas is a major city in southeast Nevada, known for its decadence and legalization of gambling. ↩

The block of an engine is the major engine part, being a metal body containing the cylinders and crankcase. The head sits on top of the block, forming the combustion chamber. Cracked blocks occur often from overheating, generally destroying the engine beyond repair. ↩

Many urban legends exist stating that putting sugar in the fuel of a car will destroy it, making it near universal knowledge. However, sugar does not in fact dissolve in fuel as rumored, and so putting sugar in the tank is only as harmful as putting any other undesired mineral in the tank. Nonetheless, this presumably refers to a sabotage attempt. Snopes (2011). Sweet Revenge. Retrieved April 18, 2014. ↩

The sweet gum tree, or Liquidambar styraciflua, is a deciduous hardwood tree native to the southeastern United States and parts of Mexico, including parts of Texas. ↩

On not playing this song live:

why haven't I played it over the years? I feel like the recording is pretty perfect — it's a home recording, obviously, but that was the magic of the boombox years: sometimes I'd be recording during just the right take, and the energy of the song's newness would be present at the exact moment when I'd gotten my fingers wrapped around the changes and my voice was fitting the words just right... and, I assume, vagaries of chance like the humidity in the room and the hour of day would come into play, I don't have enough tech knowledge to really say. relative distance from the mic. the condition of the gears on a hot day vs a cold one. etc. the song still has live potential, but it's never seemed to me like one that calls out for live performance. when I hear the version on AHWT I feel like that's the best one to hear. also you don't feed solid food to nine-day-old babies but I can't really substitute "days" with "years" because that'd just be weird, also "months" would sound ridiculous and "centuries" would change the meaning of the song drastically. well ok those are my thoughts about how I haven't really played "pink and blue" live much if at all, guess I should have some coffee before thinking out loud much more today

William Caxton Fan Club, curious: have you ever played pink and blue live?, retrieved April 18, 2014.

A small number of live recordings of Pink and Blue do exist. ↩

Pink and Blue is part of the informal series of Biblical references. ↩

Oklahoma is a state in the Southern United States bordering Texas. ↩

The Southern live oak, Quercus virginiana, is a large, broadly-branched evergreen tree iconic of the antebellum South. ↩

I presume that this refers to Hell, rather than to the generic practice of burial, or to a more general world tree motif. ↩

A reception stick is a kind of confection in which a thin, straw-like wafer is covered in chocolate, traditionally given out at wedding receptions. ↩

"I remembered why I don't ever play that song — it's not 'cause I can't remember the lyrics, it's because I'm afraid of the guy that wrote them." — Go Rehearsal Studios, Room 4, Carrboro, April 20, 2004

"This is a love song." — Letters to Santa, Chicago, December 7, 2011 ↩

"This song is... another divorce song. It's about trying to rescue something whose time to drown has come." — Troubadour, Los Angeles, December 13, 2012 ↩

Provo is a medium-sized city in north-central Utah. ↩

The Bahamas are a Commonwealth country of over 700 islands located in the Atlantic Ocean near Cuba and Florida. ↩

Also sung, "We took a cruise to the Bahamas..." Troubadour, Los Angeles, December 13, 2012 ↩

New Orleans is a major American city and the largest city in Louisiana. ↩

The Grand Army Plaza stop is a subway station in Brooklyn located next to the Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Park, served by the 2 and 3 trains during the day and the 4 at night, all coming out of Manhattan. ↩

"It's a song you may find yourself singing if all hope is gone. And you're like, 'Oh, man, this sucks that all hope is gone. I liked it better when there was hope. Guess it's too late to really be worrying about that now, though, and that's what the whole meaning of the word gone is, isn't it.' And maybe you look it up in a dictionary, but there's just a picture of your motel under that. And you think, 'That's really fucked up.' It's like a movie, and you start looking around for cameras — there's no cameras." — Bowery Ballroom, New York, March 28, 2011

The route described here takes place on the border of western Texas and New Mexico, and meanders a fair amount. Fortunately, Zachary Eldredge made a map of the route which helps understand what's going on a little bit. ↩

Jeff Davis County is a county in western Texas. None of the events in this song actually take place in Jeff Davis County, perhaps implying that he was imprisoned there prior to reaching Toyahvale. ↩

Toyahvale is a small unincorporated town of less than 100 people located in southern Reeves county, north of Jeff Davis County. No jail exists in Toyahvale, meaning that he was released from jail and drove there prior to the events in this song. ↩

Highway 285 runs north-south from Denver to southern Texas. According to the described route, the narrator drives on 285 for about 80 miles. ↩

Pecos is a small city in western Texas. ↩

Red Bluff isn't the name of any town or city in this region of Texas, or anywhere else nearby. However, it is the name of a reservoir located off 285, making that the most likely location described. ↩

Sometimes sung with different ages, for example, 15. Bowery Ballroom, New York, March 28, 2011. ↩

Travelodge is a chain of cheap hotels throughout the United States. ↩

Sunset is an American magazine about home improvement, gardening, cooking, and other household interests, established to promote California and the West. ↩

New Mexico is a state in the western United States, crossed into briefly during this song. ↩

Highway 128 is a state highway in New Mexico and then Texas, located south of Carlsbad in New Mexico and running to outside of Midland, Texas. The highway's entire length is less than 15 miles. ↩

Midland is a city in western Texas and also the title of an outtake included on the reissue. ↩ ↩²

Polaroid is a camera manufacturer and a proprietary eponym for any instant film camera due to Polaroid's popular cameras. ↩

"The song is like a study of inaction, right, of a guy who — if you write indie songs, usually your early narrators are, they think being a stalker is a romantic thing to do. You find this, that all young indie songwriters, myself included, is, they think, 'What is a more romantic figure to cut than a guy who is obsessed with some girl and is stalking her?' Hopefully, though not always, you grow out of that. But you still are interested in these guys who are tormented by these feelings that they have. So, my stalkers don't do jack, that's their new thing, they sort of just think about it and maybe, you know, walk past a building whose name is the same as the state where his intended lives." — Zoop, Farm Sanctuary, New York, June 17, 2004 ↩

Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico. ↩

Blues in Dallas is part of the informal series of Biblical references. ↩

Dallas is a large city in central Texas. ↩

Likely a reference to the seven trumpets sounded at the apocalypse and described in Revelations. The sounding of the first six trumpets mark the beginning of catastrophic events, while the seventh trumpet marks the beginning of Christ's rule on Earth:

The seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying:

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom
of our Lord and of His Messiah,
and He will reign forever and ever!

The 24 elders, who were seated before God on their thrones, fell facedown and worshiped God, saying:

We thank You, Lord God, the Almighty,
who is and who was,
because You have taken Your great power
and have begun to reign.
The nations were angry,
but Your wrath has come.
The time has come
for the dead to be judged
and to give the reward
to Your servants the prophets,
to the saints, and to those who fear Your name,
both small and great,
and the time has come to destroy
those who destroy the earth.

God's sanctuary in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant appeared in His sanctuary. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings of thunder, an earthquake, and severe hail.

Revelation 11:15 – 19, Holman Christian Standard Bible, retrieved April 22, 2014. ↩

Dealey Plaza is a plaza in the West End district of Dallas, famous for being the assassination site of President John F. Kennedy. ↩

Source Decay is part of the Jenny series ↩

In discussing Source Decay on I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, John talks about the nebulous and non-canonical nature of his writing (readers of this site, take note and beware). Retrospectively, looking back on Source Decay, he noted that the person being thought about is similar to and probably is the same person as in Jenny. I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, season 1, episode 13: Source Decay; March 21, 2018. ↩

Austin is a large city and the capital of Texas, located southeast of central Texas. ↩

Chevrolet Impala is a make of American car beginning in the late 1950s with a classic car style, including tailfins, and continuing through the present day as a more subdued sedan. ↩

Bangkok is the capital and largest city in Thailand. I've been unable to find any event that unambiguously is related to this song, but if you know, I'd like to hear it. ↩

The major east-west highways running through Texas are Interstate 10 and Interstate 20. Of these, only I-10 runs close to Austin, with I-20 passing far to the north. The only major freeway which goes directly through Austin is Interstate 35, which runs north-south.

Almost exactly two hours west of Austin, sitting on I-10, is Kerrville, host of a major annual folk festival. There's no documentary evidence linking this particular town to the song, but it's the only significant town I'm aware of that meets the criteria specified in the opening lines of the song. To drive to Austin from Kerrville, you would take State Highway 16 to US 290 East. Thank you to Texan Andy Jones for pointing this out to me! ↩

A Möbius strip is a non-orientable surface with only one boundary most easily described as being the result of taping a strip together in a loop with a twist in it. When tracing the loop, one finds that despite being two-dimensional, it only has a boundary in one dimension, and in fact has only one side. ↩

"It's about the process of turning into a plant when you stay inside the house too long and you really can't leave anymore, like the plant, who, if it wants to leave, it doesn't really matter what the plant wants, it has to wait for somebody to take him outside. And that's you in this situation, or me." — Masonic Lodge, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, December 12, 2012. ↩

Lithops is a genus of succulent plants from Africa, popularly used as house plants given the ease with which they grow. During the summer, they are dormant, and are generally slow to grow. ↩

"The only song of the bunch where I did the old record-into-the-boombox trick of taping something random from the radio and flipping the source switch from 'radio' to 'mic' and then immediately starting to play the song. Why it didn't make the album: feels like a formal exercise, or like the sort of brief vignette that was better suited to the earlier tape-only releases." — All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes ↩

Hardpan Song is part of the informal series of outtakes. ↩

Hardpan is a soil science term for a layer of soil so dense that it is impervious to water. ↩

Daylily, or Hemerocallis, is a colorful genus of flowering plants native to Eurasia and grown for their beauty. The name refers to their flower's characteristic of only lasting for a day, blooming and withering within 24 hours, often with another blossom opening the next day elsewhere on the stalk. ↩

The song begins with an easy listening or smooth jazz sample. I'm not sure what this is from — if you recognize it, please let me know. ↩

"Sounds like it's in drop-D, though I'm not sure. I didn't own a tuner at this point in my life so I'm tuned to a Casio keyboard, I think. Concludes with arguably the best yelp of my entire boombox era. Why it's called 'Answering the Phone': I can't say for sure, but my guess would be that the first several takes got interrupted by somebody calling the house and I didn't have a better title in mind." — All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes ↩

Answering the Phone is part of the informal series of Black Sabbath references and informal series of outtakes. ↩

The eponymous album Black Sabbath, which skyrocketed the band into fame.

John briefly discusses his relationship with this album and how its weirdness captivated him at the SPIN session, August 13, 2013. ↩

Zinfandel is a grape variety used to make wine, generally a red or rosé wine. ↩

A heart murmur is an abnormal heart sound made by blood passing through the heart valves in an atypical fashion. Murmurs can be functional and harmless or pathological and requiring intervention. ↩

"I've thought of this song a lot over the years, because I remember working on it pretty hard: not over a long period of time, but over the course of one of those really focused evenings where you turn around and you've spent several hours trying to get all the angles just right. I can hear the seeds of the somewhat more expansive writing style I'd shoot for on Tallahassee here: the little riff, the development, a little more elbow grease on the rhymes. But it has nothing to do with the several stories that intersect throughout the album; it's just a freestanding song, and it didn't belong, so it got put in the corner, and it stayed there. Not recorded on the Panasonic but into the Marantz PMD-222, a professional cassette recorder mainly used for reporting. Is there an actual flower that grows tall and moist and incorruptible in Indonesia: yes, and its name is 'Rafflesia,' which in the happily-lost initial draft rhymed with 'Indonesia.' Its nickname is 'corpse flower,' which could conceivably have been rhymed with 'horsepower' if I hadn't settled on a different solution." — All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes ↩

Indonesia is part of the informal series of outtakes. ↩

Indonesia is an archipelago country comprised of over 10,000 islands in Southeast Asia and Oceania, with its capital city, Jakarta, on the island of Java. ↩

Refers to Rafflesia (see above), a genus of Southeast Asian parasitic plants without its own leaves, stems, or roots that lives by colonizing vines. Rafflesia is also called corpse flower because it smells like a rotting carcass, which evolved to attract flies as pollinators. ↩

"I remember almost nothing about this one except the title. When I dug it up it came as a complete surprise. Why it didn't make the album: the first line of the second verse is dumb. 'But John,' you might say, 'you could have worked on it a little more; the song might have been salvaged thereby.' But in those days a song got exactly one day in which to either resolve its issues or be cast forth from the company of its brethren. It was harsh, but those were the rules." — All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes ↩

Midland is part of the informal series of outtakes. ↩

"There's one of the bonus tracks, is one where it has this line about an air conditioner, that when I first heard it, I was like, 'Oh, that is a terrible line, don't, no, that's not any good', you know... It's just the identification of the Kenmore. To me, that's a relic of a different style of lyric writing that I'd been doing like two years previously where I was kind of more interested in little specific physical details, and I sort of can hear myself realizing as I deliver that line that I have outgrown that style, you know, and it's like, and I sort of hear my, my enthusiasm lags. But I think the song sort of, it resolves nicely from there. You sort of have a freedom if you're not worried about anyone ever hearing it, where you can let things go to a different and almost more interesting place than the place where you're trying to knock everybody over." — NPR interview, August 10, 2013 ↩

"This one didn't have a title on the original cassette — it was the last song on a side and when I was mining the tape for anything that might be used here, it just popped up after the last one listed. Why it didn't make the album: tape ran out while I was recording it. It was always disheartening when this happened, so often I'd be too annoyed to resume recording afterwards. 'But John,' you might say, 'that's completely stupid.' You are right. My bad." — All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes ↩

Tape Travel is Lonely is part of the informal series of outtakes. ↩

The title likely alludes to the John Vanderslice album and song Time Travel is Lonely, although further similarities are unclear. ↩

"This was also the last song on a side, as you'll hear, and I did try tracking it again at the beginning of the other side, because I was fond of the song. But I didn't like the next take as much as I'd liked this one, and that was the end of that. If the song didn't like the rules, it ought to have sought out a less temperamental songwriter. Should George Romero be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom: yes." — All Hail West Texas reissue liner notes

A number of themes seem to play on each other here: a juxtaposition of the dead rising for the Last Judgment and the dead rising to attack the living in Night of the Living Dead; similarly, the title of Waco and the reference to doughboys seems to allude to the assault on the Branch Davidian compound by federal law enforcement to the experience of being trapped in a farmhouse assaulted by zombies in Night of the Living Dead. ↩

Waco is part of the informal series of Biblical references and informal series of outtakes. ↩

Waco is a moderately-sized city in east-central Texas infamous for being the location of the Waco siege, in which the ATF raided the compound of cult leader David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, resulting in a great fire and the death of 76 people. ↩

A description of the resurrection of the dead in the Christian Last Judgment, in which the dead will rise from their graves to be judged by God, preceding the rule of Christ on Earth. Simultaneously, given the George Romero reference, a description of the zombies rising to attack the living in Night of the Living Dead. ↩

Doughboy is a term for an American soldier, particularly those who fought in Europe during World War I. ↩

George Romero is a North American horror film director, most famous for his zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. ↩