Doug Burr – “Graniteville”
Posted on | November 23, 2009 | No Comments
1. I am a sucker for train songs. Something about the gentle (or frenetic) rolling beat makes me feel at home, though I could count the times I have been on one with one hand. Thus, I was an easy mark for Doug Burr’s “Graniteville”, which is a train song about trains. With repeated listens, however, there is more depth to this song than most, as Burr’s emotive voice and gentle instrumentation wrap a story about escaping a small town in the context of a real life tragedy.
2. The third track from Burr’s 2007 record On Promenade, “Graniteville” begins with a slow shuffling beat with a light keyboard before Burr’s dry, lilting voice sings a verse relating a longing from an engineer constantly on the move. However, when he hits the chorus, he references the Graniteville train disaster, which is where it gets spooky. In 2005 a train derailed near the small South Carolina town and released 90 tons of chlorine into the air and killing nine people. Train disaster songs have been done — most notably “The Wreck of the Old 97″. Where Burr steers this song away is how he weaves the sleepiness of a small town and the uncertainty of a relationship together with the story so that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
3. When Burr mentions Graniteville, the “whole town under the sleeping pill”, he brings together both the tragedy and the mood of a small town, where people are “trying so hard just to get away”. He rationalizes, and even understands people’s reasons for staying: wanting to “die in a quiet place” or frozen “watching the trains go by”. Speaking to his love, for whom “every town is small”, he speaks with the concern that she might never escape. Whether or not that is because of the train tragedy or not is left to the imagination.
4. The song echoes the “screaming of a million tons” as it lurches and speeds up near the end, with Burr’s croon reaching a fever pitch before swirling back down into silence. Burr’s ability to create a sense of mystery is what makes the song so hauntingly beautiful. I am still peeling back the layers on this, trying to find out what it is all about. I might never figure that out, and that’s alright with me.
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