HUDSONVILLE MI 1956 Lyrics

Stay calm
Keep the radio loud

Take care
Wind howls
Father piles blankets in the corner by the furnace
Mother lights candles

It’s a miracle the baby doesn’t cry

Back home doing yard work outside
Husband being stubborn under dark skies

Saw the fence by the neighbor’s shed split
Saw the kitchen windows start to bend in

So you went down to the back steps then to the basement
There were bookshelf plans on the workbench
And a flashlight shining bright all night try not to think about your son and your wife

And the lightning that scattered the night sky
And the wind bursts that tore up the power lines
At the workbench in the basement
Where you sat and tried to wait out the night

You called for three straight days
Still with your family back home
Up in Hudsonville the worst of the storms touched ground
And the phone lines were down
Turn the radio up
There’s a woman
Who got thrown from her car into a barbed wire fence
She was 6-months pregnant
Both her and the baby lived

You tried but the line or…

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About

Genius Annotation

The song opens the album and basically narrates the terrible tornado tempest that ravaged Hudsonville, MI, on April 3, 1956. The album as a whole recounts the story of a married couple through moments they’ve lived and shared and the rooms of the house they’ve lived in, from the love of the first years to the slow and relentless decay of their passion. This song though is part of the “historical fiction” songs that draw inspiration from events actually happened to lyricist Jordan Dreyer’s family (the songs with capitalised titles are all about his ancestors: see SCENES FROM HIGHWAYS 1981-2009 and THE CHILD WE LOST 1963 ). Here, his grandparents have recently married; the woman with their kid travels to Indiana to visit her family, while the husband stays in Hudsonville where he has to work. The tempest comes, and they both have to hide in the basements of the houses, not knowing what has become of each other.

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Credits
Produced By
Recorded At
Studio 4 in Conshohocken, PA
Release Date
March 18, 2014
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