Spoken verse (over loop)
At midnight the station plays the anthem and gives up the ghost
Dead air where the crop prices used to be
January doing its long division white math on the windows
→ reads great. sings terribly. noted.
Archive / Song no. 08
Case file no. 008 In progress
“Dead-Air Season”
Unassigned · Lyric draft 5 · Not yet released
BPM 78
KEY Bb maj
TIME 4/4
STARTED Jan 07, 2025
STATUS Lyric draft 5
The story so far
Started as a poem. Still not sure it should be a song.
This began life on the page, not in the air — a winter poem about the local station signing off at midnight, dead air where the farm report used to be. Poems get to be dense. Songs have to move. Five drafts in, the density is winning and the movement is losing.
The honest question on the file: does this want music, or does it want to stay a poem with a guitar leaning against it? Draft five tries a compromise — spoken verses over a two-chord loop, sung chorus. It almost works, which is the most dangerous kind of not-working.
Next step is a live test: read it over the loop at a quiet show and watch the room. Rooms never lie about poems pretending to be songs.
“Some pieces are finished when you stop setting them to music.”
Lyric file Draft 5 — poem vs. song
Sung chorus (attempt)
And it's dead-air season, nothing on the dial
And it's dead-air season, tune me in a while
Stay till the sign-on, stay caught in the static with me
Chorus finally sings. Verses still recite. The gap between them is the whole case.
Evidence Loop sketch + verdict
Loop sketch · Jan 2025
0:00 / 1:58
Two chords, brushed snare, room tone. The bed the spoken verse lies on.
Possible verdicts
- A. It becomes a song — verses learn to sing by spring.
- B. It stays a poem — published in the Notebook, guitar excused.
- C. It splits — chorus joins another song, poem goes home.
● NOT YET RELEASED — LIVE TEST DECIDES