I guess it is your fault that Santa Fe fell through the cracks.
IMO, there are two things that contributed to TBTD not being as well received by the fans as the band thought it would. The first is that there were problems with the vinyl release. The records had to be "recalled" and pressed again. Most fans didn't get the vinyl until three months after the album was released. TBTD is probably the DBT album where the sound quality between the cd and the vinyl is greatest. The guitars sound so much better in analogue. I don't know why the difference is greatest with TBTD but the guitars are much crunchier on vinyl.
The second thing that contributed to it is the sequencing on the second half of the album. The album is sequenced as follows: It is bookended by Hood and Cooley songs that are meditations on their family life. "Daddy Learned To Fly" is the heartbreak of being away from your children so much and the fear of what would happen to your children if you were to die before they are grown, something every man feels. The rest of the first half is all about men and women behaving badly: drunken binges, cheating on their spouses. That part of the album ends with the emotional heartbreak of "You Got Another". The second half of the record starts off with two songs that deal with the economic lives of regular working people in a recession. It is followed by several songs that deal with the band's perspective on the sacrifices and things they do to make a living, capping it off with "The Flying Wallendas", a song which in this context is saying that the lives of rock and rollers are really no different than vaudville and circus performers of previous generations. However, on the cd "Girls Who Smoke" was left off. "I Told You So" interupts this logical chain. It is not about the life of a musician. Because it comes right before "Santa Fe" in the sequence, "Santa Fe" takes on a slightly different meaning in this context. The song is more about a man missing his wife and the consequences of not being able to meet in Santa Fe than the familial sacrifices a touring musician makes.
When it comes to sequencing an album, Patterson Hood is one of the best ever. He reminds me of Gordon Lish or Gary Fiskejon, two editors who worked on some of the greatest short story collections of the late seventies and 1980's. He seems to understand how the meaning of an individual song is impacted by where it appears on an album. I don't know his train of thought when he made the decision to leave off "Girls Who Smoke" or place "It's Gonna Be I Told You So" where he did on the record. It wouldn't surprise me if he doesn't remember because recording a record is such an intense process. (Imagine trying to explain why you wrote a certain paragraph for a college term paper three years after the fact.) But the final impact of this decision is that "Santa Fe" lost its some of its "all this touring I have to do to make a living is sure taking a toll on my marriage" meaning and "The Flying Wallendas" becomes just a song about the lives of circus performers, losing the whole rock show metaphor in the process.
Overall, TBTD would have been much stronger if "Girls Who Smoke" had either replaced "I Told You So" or if "I Told You So" appeared in the first half of the record. The second half would be 1) A song about the average person's economic uncertainty, 2) A humorous song about the impact that has on a marriage, followed by a look at a touring band's world with 3) a song about shitty festival gigs bands take because the pay is guaranteed, 4) A song about how the strength of local scenes effect the overall economic health of the music biz, 5) A song about the touring life's impact on a marriage, 6) A song about how the rock tour is really not much different than the lives of vaudeville and circus performers of previous generations. Actually, "The Flying Wallendas" is a much more powerful song in context because the narrator is seeing his future as he remembers the retired tight rope walker who lived next door to his grandparents in Florida.
I have nowhere else to go. There is no demand in the priesthood for elderly drug addicts
