Isbell SOTW Week 12 - Stopping By

[adiantumpedatum]

Stopping By

Driving to a baseball game on a Friday afternoon
Hotter than hell in Atlanta, Georgia.
I guess it's been fifteen years since I came through here
Probably should have called to warn you.

But I'm stopping by. I'm stopping by, Daddy.

How did your life turn out? Do you ever think about
a teenage girl in Chattanooga?
You ever tell your folks the truth?
That might've been the last of you.
Would've been a shame. We hardly knew ya.

Now I'm stopping by. I'm stopping by, Daddy.

I think the best of me's still standing in the doorway
Counting cars and counting days and counting years
I could say you made me go through life the hard way
But it might've been worse if you were here.

Looking through a picture book. There's one I think my momma took.
You couldn't have been much over twenty.
Shirtless in your cutoff jeans, you hand a lollipop to me.
I probably asked where you got the money.

A picture on another page. I recognize my eyes have aged.
I'd been alone for quite a while then.
Trying to get a match to burn. Waiting on a latch to turn.
I still have difficulty smiling.

But I'm stopping by. I'm stopping by, Daddy.

I think the best of me's still standing in the doorway.
Whatever's left is headed south on 85.
Passing families on vacation headed your way.
They look so happy and alive, and I'm stopping by, Daddy.
=

From what I've read on here, there's some dissension as to the gender of the narrator. I say female. I think the "teenage girl in Chattanooga" line makes that clear. But just recently it occurred to me that the teenage girl could be the narrator's mother. Thoughts? In my mind, the sort of details that are in the song, especially, for some reason, "I still have difficulty smiling," makes me think the narrator is female. To over-generalize, that just seems like the sort of thing a girl would say. Girls are more likely to have to deal with people telling them to smile, I'd say. So being uncomfortable with that, or being unable to do that, fits with the past nicely.

Either way, male or female, this is one hell of a song. It's one of those "crafted" songs that doesn't come from Jason's life experience, which makes it less heart-wrenching and moving compared to, say, Cover me Up. But the story, and the details, are so good. "I think the best of me is still standing in the doorway, counting cars and counting days and counting years." That's one of the saddest lines he's ever written. I just see this little kid standing behind a dirty screen door, hoping and wanting and wishing for someone who never came back.

And of course this magnificent thing is followed by Daisy Mae. Assuming the narrator of Stopping By is female, I like to see these two songs as a before and after. The damage wrought by childhood abandonment rears its ugly head later on, and the girl finds herself in a really bad situation.
=

Y'all, I'm gonna need a couple of subs for SOTW next Monday 10/26 and the Monday following, 11/2. Gonna be in Nashville for a good long time. Any volunteers? Alternately, we could just hit the old pause button for a couple of weeks. I know Phungi wants to do How to Forget, so there's that...

[brett27295]

I've never really thought about the gender of the narrator and I'm not sure it matters. To me the line "teenage girl in Chattanooga" definitely refers to the narrators mother. To me the song describes a guy from a "good" family getting a girl pregnant who was from the wrong side of the tracks. He can't tell his family so he walks away from it, after visiting his child a few times early on. I think it's a decent song but it's not one of my favorites from Isbell.

[Oliver Poon]

It is one of my favorites. I've always figured the narrator is a female, but have gone back and forth about whether the "teenage girl" is the narrator or her mother.

[Sirk]

I've always thought the teenage girl in Chattanooga was the narrator's mother, and I've always pictured the narrator as a female. Come to think of it, the teenage girl could very well be the present-day narrator (old enough to drive and make a road trip to Atlanta), but my mind never connected it that way for some reason. My first impression was that the narrator was the daughter of the teenage girl in Chattanooga that "Daddy" knocked up. But I think I am going to change my mind. Especially since that sentence is present tense. "Do you ever think about a teenage girl in Chattanooga?" is very much in the moment, not necessarily reflecting on a teenage girl from all those years ago. Plus, it would certainly be the most pertinent question to the narrator, who is about to drop in on an absentee father.

So thanks to this thread, I am reversing my long-held initial thought. I'm going with the narrator as the teenage girl being referenced.

[lotusamerica]

Funny how these things work. I'd always thought the teenage girl referenced the narrator, who is female. After reading this, I saw how the narrator might be male. I've always had a mixed reaction - on the one hand, glad that Jason doesn't ignore a female perspective and on the other hand, a little uncomfortable about a man presuming to put words in a woman's mouth. It's the same reaction I have to Pauline Hawkins. Like both songs a lot but something holds me back.

Anyway, I got intrigued and found an interview where the interviewer presumes the narrator is a man and Jason replies "There was no mention of a penis in there." I can just imagine hearing him say that in a snarky way. Later he refers to the narrator as "they" making me think it's maybe intentionally vague. I don't like vague so I'm going back to the narrator being a teenage girl on her way to a baseball game.

Anyway, good song. Fast forward, reminds me in some ways of songs on SMTF in lyrical writing style, but without the acoustic guitar base.

[lotusamerica]

Oh, forgot

http://www.hearya.com/2011/04/05/an-int ... e-we-rest/

[jbshelton]

I've always assumed the protagonist was make, the teenage girl in Chattanooga his mother, and never considered it otherwise. Interesting to listen to it the other ways now.

[Bantam]

I'm not sure I buy this whole "craft vs. experience" dichotomy theory. As Jason once said in an interview, record stores, unlike bookstores, do not have a fiction and nonfiction section. Whatever the audience brings to the equation is as important as the writer's experience, or intentions. And all songs are crafted, regardless if some are more influenced by a lived reality, rather than an imagined reality.

Anyway. My biological grandfather left my grandmother for another woman when my mother was 11, and after a couple of years, never saw my mother again for the rest of his life (despite living in the same town for 40 years). Which, for whatever else he accomplished, I'm pretty sure qualifies him as a complete piece of shit.

My mom turned out to be a happy, and strong, and loving person, but every once in a while, all these years later, I still can see the hurt.

Anyway, it didn't happen to me, and I never met the guy, but I think about my mom every time I hear this song.

[Bantam]

As for the song itself, though, I think it's pretty good on its own merits.

That opening with Gamble's drums sounding like a heartbeat is pretty incredible.

In fact, the rhythm of the whole song is pretty incredible.

The lyrics do have a bit of practiced ambiguity, as evidenced by the fact we can't tell the gender of the narrator, and even have some doubt as to their identity.

But there's some really good detail, especially the "lookin' through a picture book" verse.

There are also two parts that I found pretty clever, and not in a "look at me writing" sort-of-way.

"You ever tell your folks the truth?
That might've been the last of you.
Would've been a shame. We hardly knew ya."

It's such a cutting remark on his levels of cowardice. We say so-and-so is "going to kill me," but the narrator takes it literally, if ironically. If he had told his parents, and they had killed him, that would have been, almost noble, sacrificial. Instead, he probably didn't. Instead of losing him by death, they lost him by his choice, which is somehow worse. They didn't know him.

Also, I like the two uses of "I think the best of me's still standing in the doorway." The first time, she means she was her best when still had the capacity to hope, however naive, that he could do the right thing. He's gonna come back; she just knows it. She mourns the lost of her ability to trust.

The second time, the best of her is her attempt at reconciliation, see if forgiveness is possible. Instead, she splits. Heads in the opposite direction. She can't be blamed, but knows she's broken just the same.

[one belt loop]

This is one of my favorite Jason songs. Why? Because it makes me feel something. I always saw the teenage girl as the narrator's mother, and never once, until this thread, considered that the narrator might be a woman. That's probably just because of who is singing it. I'd like to hear a woman do this song. I don't think the narrator's gender matters. Being abandoned by a parent probably is just as shitty for either. At any rate, this album came out not long after my father died. So I guess I was relating like crazy to the loss, even if it had different origins.


As for Pauline Hawkins, Patterson nailed it.