In this installment of BackStory, Jeremy Messersmith takes a moment to tell us the story behind “A Girl, A Boy, and a Graveyard,” for which he just released a video by Eric Power. According to Jerem’s camp: “If you missed it last time around, Power is responsible for the built-out-of-construction-paper Star Wars Trilogy in 2 Minutes that Messersmith wrote the song “Tatooine” for.”

A Girl, a Boy, and a Graveyard is classified in my head as non-fiction. Sometimes my songs are imaginative flights, but this one is closest I’ve ever come to simply writing down a conversation almost word for word, then singing it.

Depression can be a strange whirlpool, drawing people together in spinning cyclones of emotion. It can also provide a stable common ground, one that acknowledges our shared human condition. As depressing as this song can be, I hope it serves the latter function!

The string arrangement was something we put a lot of time into, hoping to evoke the same sad, but beautiful quality that 60′s string parts often had.

A Girl, A Boy, and a Graveyard

Lucy takes the long way home

Meets me in a field of stone

She says I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel

My body’s cold my guts are twisted steel

I feel like I’m some kind of frankenstein

Waiting for a shock to bring me back to life

But I don’t want to spend my time

Waiting for lightning to strike

Underneath a concrete sky

Lucy puts her hand in mine

She says life’s a game we’re meant to lose

But stick by me and I will stick by you

I’m like a princess in a castle high

Waiting for a kiss to bring me back to life

But I don’t want to spend my time

Waiting for just another guy

from The Reluctant Graveyard, released 04 May 2010