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Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, and Other Good Stuff


Seasick Sailor

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I've listened to that song a bunch and never really figured it all out until I just read the lyrics.
I'd always took it as a couple of older folks fooling around (kind of a theme on that album) and the man trying to keep his distance, but I never grasped that she commits suicide.

How do you figure? The lyrics say she left on a train. I assume you see that as a metaphor?
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9 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I was already looking for it (suicide) when I listened to the song, but “stains on the rugs and the curtains” with “note left on the stairs” feels suicide to me. The train line could be a metaphor.

Stains got me too, but then he describes them as ordinary wear and tear. The note and him promising not to tell anyone makes me think suicide. And I guess the overall cold and dreary tone. 

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36 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


How do you figure? The lyrics say she left on a train. I assume you see that as a metaphor?

What the other two said.  It's the stains and the promise to keep a secret.  I think the train is a metaphor for the sound of the gun shot.

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Yeah, that would work too.

Also, I think the "to tell you 'no'" morphs in meaning over the song.  Early on it's about telling someone "no" to their bad habits, and by the end of the song it's about trying to stop the final act of self destruction.

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Quote

The album ends with the song “Blackberry Winter,” a Southern term for an unexpected cold snap in May or June, when the blackberry bushes are in bloom. McMurtry assumes the persona of a new boyfriend of an older woman, whose children have all moved away and left her with none of the activities that have always warded off the depression. And when the blues come on strong like a cold snap, she’s tempted to fill her pockets with rocks and walk into the river, like Virginia Woolf. The narrator can only “tell you no and tell you no and tell you no.” He can only offer the good cheer of the song’s bouncy, descending melodic line.

 

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