In the late summer of 2005, the lives of most people living along the Gulf Coast were interupted (some permenently) due to a little hurricane named Katrina. My life was uprooted from my comfortable uptown residence to my parent's house for a few weeks (not a good time--my mom even admitted I was being an asshole...I feel like a had some liscence due to the situation though, right?), and then to a large farmhouse 25 minutes outside of my hometown, in the country, surrounded by cows, catfish ponds, silos, barns, and 20 acres of land. I can't lie; when I first arrived, I was excited about the situation--who wouldn't want to live in a farmhouse with two friends that you already play music with? I was also trying to make the best of the situation--too much thinking about what was happening to the city that I (had) lived in caused extreme anxiety and depression (see: weeks of binge drinking/eating trying to supress fear of your life being over/ruined).
Don't have a job? No problem--farmhouse life has the answer for you! Lots of reading, playing music, playing golf, gardening, throwing horseshoes, talking for hours about what to do with your life, staring at cows, drinking coffee, eating whatever happens to be at the country grocery, smoking cigarettes, driving into town to do various things (internet, buy meat and alcohol (!), see my family, other things you can't do in an unincorporated community), more reading, drinking, more talking about life, mroe drinking, a little PS2, sleeping, firepit, hotpot, being harassed by our fundamentalist landlady, other more boring stuff.
Sounds pretty fun eh? Well...it was. Most of the time. But it was also extemely unreal. I wasn't working; I read about the destruction of my city everyday, yet I was doing nothing--I was in complete stasis, just observing everything. So unreal that it began to wear on me, enough that it started to creep into the songs that I was writing. Hence "Oh, Alabama."
The problem with this song is that I do, truly, like Alabama. I wouldn't even mind calling Alabama home. It was just that at that moment, living on a farmhouse in Notasulga, not being able to see my girlfriend, friends, bandmates, and fellow New Orleanians, and being in a drunken haze sometimes, really put some bad thoughts in my mind. One of them was, "Alabama ain't no home." And it wasn't for me, then. Maybe not ever. We'll see.
Check out our official site over there to the right for the song. More origins to come.
On a side note: We recently played a show in Tuscaloosa, AL (home of the University of Alabama). It was a good night, people dancing, band was on, etc. We start playing this song, and there are some people up front that just start getting into it, moving it, just plain dancing--the songs got a groove, I can understand that. I didn't even think about the lyrics of this song until the moment was on me, "Oh Alabama you ain't no home!" The little dance party just sort of stopped. Then I got a big F#&K YOU from one of the girls. I thought our tenure in Tuscaloosa was over. But then they started dancing again, and they just got a kick out of yelling at me every time I sang the chorus. Roll Tide!!!
