It’s fair to say that I make accidental concept records. In the first episode of Sheddio Sessions, I told the story of my song ‘Cabin By The Lake’, where it came from and how it sparked a record built around the early death of my Great Grandmother.

I never sat down with the intention of crafting an entire album around the separation of two people and their frayed, but ever present connection to each other. Nor, did I sit down to write a record about the hollowed-out denizens of the suburban and rural midwest. Yet, by the time I had finished work on the first Harborcoat album, Brutal Gravity, I had a twelve song compendium of broken hearts in forgotten places that told the inside and out of that world.

While there are no specific protagonists or villains in the album’s story, the narrative centers around a trio of high school students, and their ill-conceived efforts to survive another summer of tedium, heat, boredom and dangerous distractions with grave consequences.

Annie, an impressionable young woman, who’s just finished with her sophomore year of high school, vies for the affections of two young men, both in an effort to pass the time and to validate her waning self-esteem.

Life for these three kids is plainly hard. Their respective families live in a section of The Ravines, a trailer park just west of a small town; the trailers within the park all betraying some form of dysfunction and abject poverty. These are homes decorated with postcards and pink slips from the city’s water department, Consumer’s Energy or the local cable company all signifying an impending shut-off should the bills remain unpaid.

Virtually all of the trailers are in disrepair. Families of six, eight or more occupy a space designed for no more than four. Part time jobs, side hustles and the occasional questionable deal are all pursued to keep mouths fed and lights on. It is a threadbare existence. Poverty is exhausting. Education and the rearing of children often seen as a luxury for which there is no time.

I do not look upon or write about this scene with pity. I see it with gratitude. These are very often good folks working against a difficult system that in many respects has left them and their families behind. As the middle class eroded, folks like these were the first and largest casualties.

Driving past ‘The Ravines’, I am reminded of my own good fortune. To have been raised in a home with economic security, and with loving and supportive parents who were present and involved in my life. I have been able to do much of the same for my own children. But, what if I hadn’t?

It seemed that the margins were so thin. I always feared deeply that I would fail to provide what was necessary for my own children to have a shot at a full and happy life. Even if and when I failed to do that, I always had the help of a supportive family system. So many did not have the same good fortune.

The songs on Brutal Gravity seemed to spew forth in a collage of short stories set across an ex-urban landscape so very much like the city that I have lived in now for two full decades. This universe was built upon on my own reality and the burning idea that any of us could be thrust into that spot and be forced to live a completely different life.

Largely, the songs on the record are my own imagination creating a world in which my daughters are given a different set of experiences, supports (or lack thereof), and circumstances. With a few minor changes to birth parents, parental involvement, education initiative, economic status at birth and more, life just a few blocks down the street can make for a completely different existence. There but for the grace of . . .

‘The Ravines’ recounts the story of a fire that burns up twelve trailers in an evening at the trailer park. It’s days after the conflagration, and the police are hunting down suspects, mostly focusing on the ne’er do well kids that live in the park.

We watch the story unfold through the eyes of our trio, learning their fates and their misdeeds along the way. It is a simple tale of the folly of youth, littered with grave and everlasting consequences. While we may not only be the sum of our actions, we also have deeds that we will never outrun.

My bandmate Ian Walker jokes that this song is his “second favorite song about a trailer park fire”, his first being ‘Kerosene’ by the Bottle Rockets. The joke here being the absurdity of having any favorite songs on such a specific, and frankly bizarre topic. Nonetheless, it makes me chuckle each time I think of my own damned song.

So much of what happens to us throughout life is laid upon a few building blocks dropped into place, often by chance, as we design the physical and emotional home in which our adult self will live. ‘The Ravines’, and Brutal Gravity use the from of song to take a look at what might happen if we shifted a brick or two.

Enjoy,

Matty C

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