Chicago-based band sings about a couple of dysfunctional parents from the Salt City:
Unlikely as it may seem, one of the most popular tunes performed by a Chicago-based band is a song titled “Syracuse.”
When Windy City guitarist James Weigel wrote the song a half-decade ago he had yet to visit the Salt City. His inspiration was not our bedraggled burg itself but a pair of our rowdier residents. A young couple who lived here had crashed at a communal home of musicians, including the songwriter, and their devil-may-care behavior inspired his tune.
The guy and gal, who drove a new SUV, had a baby boy with them when they visited the Midwest. Raising a child, Weigel noted, didn’t stop those poor little rich kids from their primary pursuit — getting high.
Catchy chorus
The song depicts the couple driving back home to Syracuse from Illinois. It features a catchy chorus with the lyrics: “And when you get back home to Syracuse/ You can rest your weary head/ Take some pills, sniff some cocaine,/ Put the baby to bed.”
Now, some six years after writing the song, Weigel can be seen performing “Syracuse” on YouTube.com with his neo-bluegrass band, the Henhouse Prowlers also known as Sexfist. Despite its upbeat rhythm, it’s a dark and brooding composition, a bitter slice of life prompted by a couple of wayward parents from our home town.
The tune’s description on YouTube describes it as “a poignant and riveting song about a young couple’s propensity for drug use while raising a newborn child.”
Weigel’s composition, one of the tracks on the Henhouse Prowler’s self-titled debut disc, will also be played this Sunday night, Nov. 16, on Bill Knowlton’s “Bluegrass Ramble” radio show which airs from 9 p.m. to midnight on WCNY-FM 91.3.
Story behind the song
In 2002, Weigel, who now has a wife and daughter of his own, was then living with a handful of band-mates in the Outlaw Family Band, a rock group in which he played electric guitar.
“There were about 20 people living in our house, and it was a few years after Jerry Garcia had died and the Grateful Dead were playing up in Wisconsin at Alpine Valley,” Weigel recalled. “A couple from Syracuse who knew some of our house-mates went to that show and, on their way back home, ended up staying with us for a week.”
They visitors made a memorable entrance. As they pulled up to the house, their SUV crashed into a car parked in the driveway.
“He had bottle of vodka, and they were both drunk, but they also had a six-month-old kid,” the songwriter said. “It was a chaotic mess. They liked to party and having a kid didn’t stop them from that one bit — a real dysfunctional family. When they left we all kinda breathed a sigh of relief, and as I thought about that couple driving home the chorus came to me, ‘when you get back home to Syracuse you can rest your weary head.'”
A recent visit here
More recently, Weigel got to see Syracuse for himself. About a year or so ago he drove here to attend the wedding of his sister who lives in the suburbs.
“I have to admit that when I was driving out there myself, I thought about that couple in the song and how miserable they would’ve been in their car,” Weigel said.
He now plays Dobro with the Henhouse Prowlers, an acoustic sextet that also features banjoist Ben Wright who hails from nearby Homer. Wright moved to Chicago in 2000.
“Our ‘Syracuse’ song definitely gets in people’s heads,” Wright said. “It’s such a great story, told with an almost angry voice. Everyone who comes and sees us in Chicago knows it.”
The song is a favorite of the Prowlers’ Tuesday-night audiences at the Red Line Tap in Rogers Park, Chicago’s northern-most neighborhood. Every Tuesday the Prowlers change their name to Sexfist for that weekly Red Line gig.
“We draw a Loyola University crowd there and the Sexfist name works in our favor, and ‘Syracuse’ is one of our most popular songs with those kind of crowds,” Weigel said. “People who wouldn’t ordinarily come out to hear a traditional bluegrass band come out to hear Sexfist, and then they find out that they really like bluegrass.”
Dabbling in dismal themes
And those youthful audiences really like Weigel’s songs such as “Syracuse,” “Drifter” and “40 Acres and a Mule,” all of which dabble in dismal themes. In fact, the title of the group’s next CD is “Trouble.”
The Prowlers’ original material is more urban-oriented than much of the standard bluegrass repertoire, but even the songs of Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley can be dark as a dungeon, dealing with topics such as murder and infidelity. Countless bluegrass bands play a version of “Take a Whiff on Me,” an old folk song about cocaine.
As sociologists Jeff Ferrell; and Clinton Sanders wrote in their book, “Cultural Criminology,” Many bluegrass songs “aggrandize home, spiritual life, family values and homespun tradition, while others bemoan their disintegration.”
In that context, Henhouse Prowlers/Sexfist faithfully follow the footsteps of their bluegrass predecessors.
“We’re not farmboys,” Weigel said, “so we really embrace the urban aspect of what we do.”
In the process, thanks to “Syracuse” the song, Syracuse the city has become a murky footnote in the annals of modern bluegrass.
‘Syracuse’ song airs Sunday
Syracuse Area Music Hall of Fame broadcaster Bill Knowlton plans to air “Syracuse” between 9 p.m. and midnight this Sunday Nov. 16, on his “Bluegrass Ramble” radio show on WCNY-FM 91.3, and online at wcny.org.
‘Syracuse’ by James Weigel:
Drivin’ on for miles and miles
With your woman at your side
Pushing 95 cuz you can’t stand to drive with her for another night.
She got a nasty reputation
For running ’round and ’round and ’round,
And now you got a kid,
And you can’t stand to give her up, it’d bring you down.
Nasty friends and nasty weather,
But that don’t matter now, you’re goin’ home,
One more night of driving now
And you’ll back where you and her and the kid belong.
And when you get back home to Syracuse
You can rest your weary head,
Take some pills, sniff some cocaine,
Put the baby to bed.
You coulda had a life without her,
You coulda had some purpose too,
But a snotty little mama’s boy
you never had the guts to see it through!
Never broke and never hungry
With mom and dad to pay the bills
And playing grown-up in your brand new SUV
Is better when you’re poppin’ pills.
You ain’t never had to work for nothing,’
Roll out the carpet red and silver spoon.
Here come the king and queen and little prince
to show us all what money can do.
Don’t it seem a long time comin’
Waiting for the break of the day
When you’re drivin’ down the highway
And your life just seems to slowly slip away?
You try to dream of something better
Waitin’ at the end of the road,
But your dreams are just a waste of time
And you know that you got nowhere else to go.
You thought you’d have the perfect family.
You hate yourself and you hate her too,
And you hate the kid for being born
But that’s OK, he’ll probably hate you.
And when you get back home to Syracuse
You can rest your weary head
Take some pills, sniff some cocaine,
Put the baby to bed.
You’re hurtin’ her, she’s hurtin’ you.
You eyes are burnin’ red,
But when you get back home to Syracuse
you can rest your weary head.
But when you get back home to Syracuse
you can rest your weary head.
