Simple Season
Wtf does blueberry knees mean and why are we fine
It’s two years before we record Landmark. Jake is in a committed relationship. Whistler is deep in the throes of bagging groceries. Nathan and I are isolated on our island of suburbia with another companion. Julia. Living in neighboring suburbs, we find ourselves within close proximity and temperament. Julia is one of the writers among us. Always dialing in some exacting prose to fit the moment; a way to size up the world and look down its sights. In our late teens we find ourselves deeply moved by the world and woefully underserved by the monotony of the suburbs. The gilded years of bleeding hearts and stifled ambitions. In the summer of that year, Nathan’s parents corral us into laboring for blueberries. One of those pick-it-yourself places that charges by weight. It’s farm country in peak summer. Rolling hills, acres of green. If there’s something to savor on our suburban island, it’s the closeness to land like this.
Our friendship fit the terrain of our lives. I went to the university in town, Julia got a job at a coffee shop on campus, and Nathan did as he pleased, working at a church or sleeping on my couch. Nathan and Julia put together collections of their poems around this time. I was happy to read and admire, rather than to try my hand. Their concerted effort to formalize their work always gave me the sense that I was the least literate of the group (a title I still claim). Between school, coffee, and our foray into professional drinking, we found the consistency of each other’s company. Simple Season is an ode to the lust-for-words friendship we had, set against the backdrop of the boring and beautiful towns we occupied.
Nathan brought it into the room almost fully formed. All the parts in their place. The band quickly filled in their roles and it was done. BJ came over to the basement near the end of our writing, and we demoed all the songs in the room. Constantly goaded by his blasé attitude, we teased and were teased relentlessly. One of BJ’s best quips about Hippo lyrics was a melody he would mockingly sing with the words “…Spring time, mushrooms, cigarettes…” distilling us down to our most fundamental components. Rarely a serious comment was uttered; it became a sarcastic mess of jabbing at each other’s performances and personalities. What emerged was a climate of competitive closeness. Who could endear themselves to BJ the most. Who could evade his jabs the longest. It set the stage for a sometimes fraught working environment. Whoever wasn’t in the room was probably the butt of a joke. Or whoever was doing a take was getting unknowingly dragged into the other room. Seldom did it occur to us that we may be getting treated the same way our bandmates were behind their backs. It was the seemingly harmless behavior of a funny, experienced producer. But in reality (and retrospect) it was divisive.
But of the many instances of frustration, there were also moments of achievement. The feeling of capturing something unique. A sense of having to fight to find something rewarding. Getting to work with your best friends with exciting people in new places. I think that’s what this song is ultimately about. Anchoring that feeling of excitement in the familiarity of wistful, jovial companionship. And maybe that’s why we put the whistling in the bridge. Frankly, we put the final nail in the coffin of whistling in choruses. Us and Target. After 2017… if you whistled in a chorus, you were the laughing stock of low- to mid-tier indie bands. Honestly, if you whistled in a song before then, you were probably getting laughed at. I’m thinking we may have shot ourselves in the foot with the whistling. It’s fair to say we nailed ourselves in that coffin.
two demos & more photos below: