(From the Archive) - "The Woods Near Jim's House" (2011)

It was 7 years ago this month that we released our 3rd album, Quickly Quickly Quickly. When we went to record demos for that album, we recorded a total of 12 songs. 4 of them were selected for Quickly. 6 of them were properly recorded and intended to be on an immediate follow up album to Quickly, but we’re never officially released. The remaining 2 other songs, however, never made it past the demo stage. This is one of them... “The Woods Near Jim’s House”.

The original demo features only me singing and playing acoustic guitar with Pat playing electric guitar. It was intended to be a full band song, and I felt that the demo felt too empty to release publicly. So last month I took a day and recorded some additional instrumentation to flesh out what my original vision of the song was.

The song title comes from a mysterious patch of woods right near the childhood home of original Tea Club bassist Jim Berger, where we would often go for inspiration or to make home movies. The song lyrics reference a story I had been working on, in which a young man awakens in the middle of the night and looks out his window to see a strange glowing house emanating from the woods nearby. He goes out by himself to investigate, but sees something so terrifying that he refuses to ever tell anybody what it is, for fear of traumatizing them as well. 

Evening again
Moss and grass
Fern and vine assembling
Face on the wall
Moving eyes
I’ve said too much

Tell me to rest
Rest my angry head and then
Morning will prove wiser
Than the evening again
Sweet as the taste
Never worth its moment

Evening again
I’m too afraid to tell you
What I saw last night
I’m too afraid to open
That door for you

Tell me to rest
Rest my weary head and then
Morning will prove wiser
Than the evening again
Sweet as the taste
Never worth its moment
Or the fear of its return

Dan McGowan - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, additional instrumentation 

Patrick McGowan - Electric Guitar