[Editor’s note: Irish-based alt-country artist Podge Lane will be releasing his new studio album Multiple Dead Ends on Friday, August 30th. For Lane, whose influences include bands such as Bahamas, Those Darlins and Wilco, his third album gave him the opportunity to grow and experiment with his sound as well as an outlet to ponder questions of life. On the album he asks the question: “What have I done in the time I’ve got?”
Says Lane “I always planned to tell my first two album stories the way I did, my past and my present, and to end the trilogy with this one, my future. As someone who used to go into my parents’ room at 5 or 6 because I was afraid of turning 40, the future can be scary. So, I tried to detail my feelings of this fear of ageing through a winding narrative that never really ends, cause I guess there is no end.”
That includes new song “My House,” which we’re happy to premiere the lyric video today. The song finds Lane confronting his inner demons. Lane also penned an exclusive essay for us about how he connected a childhood memory of a raccoon invading a Little Tikes plastic playhouse with his current anxiety.]
Do you remember those Little Tikes plastic playhouses? Everyone seemed to have them, the ones with the plastic door that would swing open, looked like a cottage but was for kids to playhouse? When I was really young there was one of those in our backyard. I never played in it, it wasn’t even mine, but I remember it always being in that yard. Then one day there was a racoon in it. Big fuss in the house. It was out during the day which wasn’t a good sign and so me, my mom and my brother proceeded to run into the house, call animal control and wait things out while looking out the windows.
That’s how I feel about this song. When I was writing ‘My House’, I was going through one of my busiest periods; touring, making music videos and releasing music, but I was struggling with feeling like a burden to those around me. It felt like everything was piling in on me at the worst possible moment, like an unwanted house guest calling in at the worst possible moment, staring at the pile of dishes you haven’t done yet while you just wish they would leave.
I wanted this song to exercise all those demons, in a comedic way. But I didn’t want it to feel too specific as to just what I was going through, I wanted it to feel universal. Kind of like an old sitcom theme song showing all the ways they would poke fun at the unlikable character, like in Kenan And Kel or The Fresh Prince. Those themes worked for everyone, cause everyone feels like they have an unwanted guest. Whether it’s your own thoughts, how others feel about you, your stresses, debt, or, on the odd occasion, even a raccoon.
Sonically, I toyed around with a lot of versions of this song. Ballads, long rock jams, I even made an acapella version. But around the time I was struggling with this song, I started finally getting into The Band. I was so inspired to try and recreate the feeling of the basement tapes era country rocker, and this finally helped me settle on the sound ‘My House’ has now.
It’s funny because being a one-man band and playing all the instruments myself, I always have to tap into that idea of being a kid again, almost playing make-believe scenarios. Pretending I WAS The Band recording the track, like I was every member of a rock group from the 70s, I’d even put on different outfits recording each instrument. Doing full takes, no cuts, on the bass and piano because they had to follow the band leader, like Levon was really at the helm steering the ship, and yes, pun fully intended. I went full character mode on this, except my studio wasn’t pink and there were no groupies. Well, except my cat, but I don’t know if she even liked the song. When I finally recorded those vocals, it felt so cathartic to have this made up Podge Lane Band backing me as I sang this song about letting go of the bad parts of yourself. My big pink was my home studio, and a Little Tikes plastic playhouse.
I couldn’t be prouder of this song as a major cornerstone of this album. When I think about what I want this album as a whole to accomplish, this song hits the nail on the head. Which is to take my stupid thoughts and put them down on a record, so that if someone needs to laugh and dance, they can. But if they want to read into the lyrics because they’re having a bad day, they’ll find someone who gets it. Someone who has felt like they weren’t good enough. Someone who thought everyone else was perfect and they were the odd one out. Someone who felt alone. And maybe even someone who found a racoon in a toy playhouse with their mom and still thinks about it 16 years later.
You can follow Podge Lane on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and listen to his music via his YouTube page.
Contributor
Podge is an New York City-based, Ireland native, alt-country, singer-songwriter and avid hyphen collector (a joke Podge usually makes on stage about all the hyphen references he gets such as singer-songwriter)
