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RiverStomp

from Singles 2010 by Matt roi Berger

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about

RiverStomp is a song I started with the Hey! about a year ago - we even played it live a few times - but it never really felt right with me. It’s a more difficult type of song for me to write - it has a groove as opposed to a riff, and extended instrumental sections that need to scorch and chill equally. I never really got what I wanted and it’s place in a punk band’s set list was always questionable.

I’m getting ready to play the first live shows of my material in a while at the end of this month, and I wondered whether RiverStomp would benefit from the new band’s sound and orchestration. Using the bass parts that Matt Gliva wrote for the original version, I spliced up the rhythm section to build as a dance song rather than a rock tune, and used synths instead of a bass guitar. I added new some new loop-y guitar lines and bookended the whole thing with hand percussion to give it the rural, riverside feel that first inspired the song.

I’m always surprised to reread these lyrics. At this point in my life, as with a year ago, I can’t really call myself a religious man. There’s something in me, though, that hopes for a moral, a wrap-up, a punchline or anything at the end of this life - someone to relate to it with. And I suppose I’m singing to the idea that there’s comfort in having someone promise to watch you as you go back to the sea.

lyrics

There was a man
He spent a time
He was filled in the night
Yeah, he spilled and he died
He wake a dream
At the river edge
See the line out to the water
See the barge pulling in
And the wind go: Ooo.

He tippy toe
He grope ahead
See another hundred dozen
Shufflin into the ship
He push to lead
His body red
He starts a screaming
For the captain’s head
Yeah he said: …

The water move
The ship afloat
And the man size up the captain
Look a hundred years old
He said: No son of mine
Was lied to bed
Where’s the treatment I’m awarded
Since I paid for this trip
(And the captain said:)
Oh, my lovely son
Oh, my child-born
All my passengers
Get what they think they earned
When you think of me,
You build your home at sea
When you dream of me,
I feel it.

And on the way, some men were drowned
For shore they swam, hearts weighed with doubt
The man, he wait at captain’s hip
And, soft, the captain said:
I will go down with this ship.

credits

from Singles 2010, released December 31, 2010
Music by Mattroi with Alex Nifong and Matt Gliva

Lyrics by Mattroi

Backing Vox by Melissa Lusk

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Matt roi Berger Brooklyn, New York

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