The Bridge Between (Summer and Fall)
Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners, Paper Kites, Brand New, and end-of-summer songs
“But honestly, it's not just for me
Both been so unhappy
So, let's just see what happens
When the summer ends”
—American Football
Seasons seem to begin too early these days. You can find Christmas decorations at Costco right now. And even though pumpkin spiced lattes abound and people are wearing sweatshirts in 85 degree weather, the summer hasn’t technically FALLen. This week on the Swap we want you to stop and reflect on the music that cements summer’s end. Like our Bonus Track guest, that music might take you back to the last summer of adolescence and the first fall of adulthood.
Lake Missoula | Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners feat. Mt. Joy (Jonathan)
Lake Missoula has been a song that I have often gone back to the past five years but always wished it was a longer track (the original is only 1:46). However, I just came across this new longer version released this year featuring Mt Joy. I’m not sure what Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners had in mind when they wrote this one, but I’ve always pictured looking out at a lake in the Northwest at the end of summer with the faint smell of falling leaves in the air. To me, it’s a perfect song to bridge the two seasons.
Also available on Apple Music.
Till the Flame Turns Blue | Paper Kites (Ben)
Chicago summers are hard to beat. We’ve already hit sweater weather several days, which is great - but too soon for me. This song (which I assume has ties to David Gray that I don’t know about) is about longing for past days. While not a song about summer - I am longing for another month of August.
Also available on Apple Music.
The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot | Brand New (Kody)
I wore out Brand New’s album Deja Entendu in the summer of 2003. There was a girl next to me that summer doing the same. And there was also an Emo boy showing up on the scene a little too often. My girl had a track record of getting bored in relationships. “Call me a safe bet, I’m betting I’m not,” as this song says. She dumped me right before college for the Emo boy leaving me alone and “just wanting to be missed” in Shawnee, OK.
“Salt in the wound.”
The song has nothing to do with the summer, but when I hear it I can still feel the in-between-summer-and-fall scene at the pond park where she confirmed my suspicion of the “Brand New” boy.
(Thankfully most Emo phases end and I got her back - 15 years married in November)
Also available on Apple Music.
Bonus Track: The Sunset of Summer and Adolescence by Ryan Nichols
I've selected Death Cab For Cutie's Summer Skin as my de facto 'end of summer' song in the sense that the lyrics reference Labor Day and the end of summer. But the song isn't about summer’s end, it's about a relationship running its course, and the lyrics don't actually mean anything to me...few lyrics do. The music that is inseparably fossilized with (and induces immediate recollection of) the 'end of summer' is the unofficial soundtrack my friends and I were listening to in August of 2003, the month we all departed for college, formally leaving behind the last summer of our adolescence.
This isn't the only chronological period of my life that I associate with the music I was listening to during that time frame, nor is it my only experience with summer ending. The albums we were listening to don't provide any profound poetry about the close of a season or really anything of importance at all, but they do provide a snapshot of what we were listening to during a life transition that we were all individually experiencing, simultaneously.
Within the last few weeks of being a 'resident' of Edmond, Oklahoma, I remember blasting Brand New's Deja Entendu and the Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatorium on the car ride up to my friend Layton's lake house in Tahlequah. I was arriving later than everyone else because I was always late back then, and when I parked and got out of the car, I was greeted by the sound of a firecracker immediately followed by the collective cackling laughter of all my friends. When I think of 'the end of summer', I think of those albums (along with a few others), and when I hear those albums, I think of the transition from summer to fall and the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
August to September of 2003 was that weird period when I didn't really know how much my life would or wouldn't change. I was living in the moment and enjoying time with friends, not knowing if that enjoyment was fleeting. Would we all go our separate ways and forget each other? Would the people whose simple giggling at fireworks that brought me so much excitement on a weekend in Tahlequah even be a part of my life in a year?
Then a few months go by and I’m still taking road trips with some of those same cackling friends to see Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day, and the aforementioned Brand New, and seeing the rest of the group during fall break when we piled what seemed like 20 people into a hotel room in downtown Dallas. And again during winter break when we drove to Colorado for a ski trip, and then the summer after freshman year, which felt like every other summer, and then suddenly we were graduating college.
It took a very long time after college for me to not reference summers as a measurement of time, for a year to begin in January instead of August. Now, with 20 Augusts behind us, I can't help but be thankful I'm starting another 'year' knowing those friendships strengthened rather than waned, and that those end-of-summer albums are still just as much fun.
Ryan Nichols lives in Dallas, Texas, and has an awesome cat named Franklin. His most memorable concert was seeing Saves the Day and Taking Back Sunday on Halloween. They performed in costume as the Wizard of Oz and the Rockaholics. Like all of us, he has been listening to a lot of Zach Bryan these days.
Thank you for reading. May all your favorite bands (and friends) stay together!
-TheMusicSwap