I already told you all about the background of this song, so I don’t have to say anything more about that. The reason I added the demo version of this song to the tail end of this record is because I think it’s reckless and beautiful somehow. The whole thing was recorded live with a little ZOOM recorder in Ollie Samland’s apartment in Hamburg. Ollie had never heard the song before when he sat down and improvised that beautiful pedal steel guitar part that you hear. The song also wasn’t really finished yet. It’s filled with grammatical mistakes and I even improvised some lyrics at the end. To all you German speakers out there, I know some of the things I sing sound ridiculous. I know. I know. All that being said, it just feels young and fragile to me, which is the opposite of the other version of this song on this record and which is probably why I think it’s beautiful. The spontaneity behind this song and the entire album, for that matter, is probably why I’m releasing the thing.
lyrics
you’re no city you’re nothing other than popular, but where’s the rest, you make me hollow but you hold me tight - why can’t you let me go, i threw up the letters of my name on your streets, you came in stuck to the bottom of tourists’ shoes and now you’re leaving - there’s no wall there’s no wall in this room that i’m in, i only have, i only have a suitcase in berlin - they say that you were ripe, you were young, like empty pages in an open book without words ready for something meaningful to be written in - but what happened, you got lame, gentrified, and now you’re just an old whore too expensive for a boy - there’s no wall there’s no wall in this room that i’m in, i only have, i only have a suitcase in berlin - but i don’t want to be an american, i don’t want to be a german, i don’t want to be anything other than what i am - but everything that i have fits in a suitcase in berlin, a suitcase in berlin, a suitcase in berlin, uh, but a suitcase in berlin is better than nothing
credits
from Koffer,
released November 18, 2016
Ian Fisher - Vocals / Guitar
Ollie Samland - Pedal Steel Guitar / Engineer
On “Meet Me By the River,” Dawn Landes’s self-described “Nashville record,” buoyant country melodies settle deep into lush instrumentation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 7, 2018