Neither Could Dylan

Sometime in 2002 I was a frequent contributor to the dwindling official Treble Charger message boards. The band had recently released Detox and then shortly after announced an indefinite hiatus; a crushing blow to young me who was a bit of a super fan of the band to say the least. 

There were only a few of us that used the boards regularly at that time and I remember them all really well. 

There was a singer-songwriter from Texas that wrote in the vein of Bowling For Soup who I admired a lot for his clever lyrics and ability to incorporate so much popular culture in his writing, just like Jaret Reddick. 

There was a guy in university who definitely carried himself like a guy in university who was a bit more knowledgeable about the world than the rest of us appeared to be. He was really into cult-classic movies like Cool Hand Luke and I learned about a lot of them from him. 

There was a girl just a year older than me who was our resident Sum 41-fangirl that we’d chirp on, reminding her frequently that Treble Charger was the better of these two iconic Canadian bands; She was also really into karaoke. 

And finally there was Sean who inspired State Lines, our California boy dreamin’. Originally from Fullerton, he was into politics, punk, world history and was learning bass and drums. Before long he’d put his money where his mouth was about wanting a better future for himself and his fellow Americans and like a true patriot enlisted in the American military. 

I spoke about Sean previously when I released my first EP Jestem Krzywym Lasem, so if you want to grab a bit more about him you can jump over to that blog series on crookedforest.ca. 

Then of course there was me rounding out our weird little online Treble Charger support group. The youngest of the bunch but one of the more vocal ones – a byproduct, I guess, of being the youngest in my family as well. While I enjoyed talking politics with Sean and chatting about music and movies with the others, my main aspirations then were to start my own band. 

Of course, I am often a few steps ahead of myself and didn’t even have a guitar yet, but I wanted to learn how to write songs and I’d begun trying to learn how to do it myself by listening to other songs but, the thing about that I didn’t like was that it felt a little like cheating. 

So, wanting to take my songwriting to the next level, I took the plunge and purchased my first guitar the summer I turned 13 using money I’d earned from chores and working for my parent’s businesses on the low and once I let Sean in on the news, he said he’d be interested in collaborating with me on lyrics. We only put together a couple songs before I felt confident in understanding general song structure to keep at it myself and none of them ever transpired into an actual listenable experience, but it’s not lost on me how critical his involvement was in me getting to the point I’m at now. Just to have someone interested in reading words I’d written was a massive deal to me and still is today.

The years that I mentioned in the introduction of this album series from were the years that I got to know Sean the most over long e-mails spread out over days. Often beginning with an apology on both our ends for how life had gotten busy and short sporadic MSN Messenger conversations that were usually to quickly talk about a record one of us had been recently listening to and making sure the other made time to listen to it as well because “… wasn’t that genius?! It’s SO good!” 

A lot of my favourite artists of then and now largely became that because of these conversations and they’re mentioned in State Lines; Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, Hum. Not mentioned, but could have been contenders: Green Day, The Postal Service, Queens of the Stone Age.

Sean and I shared some of our highest highs, lowest lows and biggest aspirations with each other over the years we spoke. We would often talk about hanging out when I eventually made my way out to California, but somewhere in the middle of his military service he disappeared entirely. So while that never came to fruition, nowadays when I travel, he has a funny way of popping up again, like walking down Fullerton street in Chicago, Illinois. 

Official Lyrics:
There were no state lines when we met
No border crossings or toll to spend
Just the crackling of the keys
Favouring conversation over sleep
The way it still could be

I fall so fast that it breaks me
Faltering out of line like a bad melody
I still think I could’ve made you happy
If you hadn’t chosen to leave 

I go back and forth like a pendulum
What I said and if you responded
Replaying records you’d recommend
Like Elliot Smith’s St. Ides Heaven
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again

Back then was like an orchestra
Cascading up into the balconies
After we’d snuck in from the cheaper seats
Oblivious to how out of place we seemed
In our plain tees and rugged jeans 

And now the needle skips during Transatlanticism 
The way I drunkenly slur when I try to mention it 
And now I hate You’d Prefer an Astronaut 
Like observing the stars
And if they shine like this,
If they shine like this where you are 

I go back and forth like a pendulum
What I said and if you responded
Replaying records you’d recommend
Like Elliot Smith’s St. Ides Heaven
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again
It shouldn’t be this hard to love again

---

I think people and friendships like the one I shared with Sean are a rarity, so I’m happy to have been able to pen State Lines to commemorate this memory. It’s full of lyrical cliches that he’d hate, but I think he’d forgive me for those on this one.

Keep listening and jump to track 3: Values