Fall in New England

I grew up contradancing. On Thursday nights, a group of us Unitarian kids would drive out to Concord Center to dance at the Concord Scout House. It was a small, warm room that smelled like a church - oak wood and old furniture and warm bodies - with a live band up front. We'd go all year round, dancing in long lines with folks of all ages, twirling across the floor.

In the winter, the older kids would come back from college and we'd all get together again to sing at the Christmas Eve Service. Then for New Year's we'd go dancing at the Scout House. In the spring we'd tramp through the marshes before heading over to dance, and we'd hear the rain hitting the old roof. In the summer we'd stay out after the dance into the warm evenings. We might go park our cars on the back roads and bushwhack into Walden Pond after hours or wander the dark Great Meadows with the stars overhead. And in the fall, when the leaves began to turn, we'd pick apples and carve pumpkins and get cider donuts from the farm and dance as the autumn breeze whistled through the trees outside.

There's an ache of nostalgia I get thinking back to those days. I was raised in a multicultural family with roots all over the world, but the place I was born - the place I grew up - is old New England, and fall is the season old New England wears best. The burning red of the sugar maples, and the clack of acorns hitting the roadways, the season when fires move from the pit out back to the hearth. 

Fall is a time for me to connect with the outdoors. When I was really little, my Dad taught me how to eat acorns, collecting them and cold-leaching the tannins out before grinding them into flour and baking them into acorn bread, a tradition I am trying to carry into my own adulthood each year. It's also deer hunting season. Three years ago I got the opportunity to tan myself two hides from deer that a friend of the family harvested.

Falling Leaves is an ode to New England in autumn. If Beaver Brook was a waltz, then Falling Leaves is a contradance - a celebration, whirling, twirling, spinning in the autumn air. It's chock full of easter eggs of New England places and moments that mean a lot to me. I wish I could give you a Genius-style lyric breakdown of all of the meanings and references. S&H bricks, Sherman Bridge, and the second verse, which of course alludes to Thoreau's parable about the new Fitchburg train line. He writes,

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you.

The next time you're sauntering out to Fitchburg, why don't you pop on Falling Leaves?

Falling Leaves would not have been possible without a lot of hard work from a lot of really talented people. First and foremost the two guest instrumentalists, Noah Harrington on upright bass and Sofía Chiarandini on fiddle. This song would not have been the same without you both. I also owe endless appreciation to Chloe Koval and Ian Downie for taking the harmonies I wrote and breathing life into them. There's just nothing like a good four-part harmony to elevate a song like this. Thank you to Ian as well for being a creative partner as we worked on our records together. His first single, Double Yellow Line, is now out! And thank you as always to Sam Eastman for helping out throughout the recording process, which was 100% DIY for this song. Finally, thank you once again to Ian van Opijnen for the masterful mixing and masterning. Couldn't have done it without you.

Falling Leaves

When the leaves on the old hills burn like red-hot coals

And the grass frosts over in the early morning cold

I’ll take you down to Sherman Bridge Road

Where the Sudbury River runs high

And we’d go to the old Concord Scout House by chance

Where the local string band would play and old time contradance

There’d be holes in our shoes and the knees of our pants

And a gold harvest moon in the sky

And we’d dance just like the falling leaves

Twirling through an autumn breeze

And when the trees are bare as hollow bones

You’re my evergreen

And I would hike to Fitchburg like it’s 1849

And you’d laugh and say you’d rather try to take the Fitchburg Line

And we’d meet somewhere out west of here to while away the time

With a cider and some huckleberry wine

And the cemetery wall is made of S+H bricks

From an old farmhouse chimney built in 1886

And I’d lay us out a blanket with champagne and candlesticks

And we’d tell ghost stories late into the night

And we’d be singing with the autumn breeze

Whistling through the sugar maple trees

And when the trees are bare as hollow bones

You’re my evergreen

Oh you’re my evergreen

And I really want to show you

The things I loved when I was young

Before we move out to the city

Where neon lights outshine the sun

And maybe when we’re older

We’ll move out to a quaint New England town

And I would bake you acorn bread

As we watch the geese fly south

And we’d dance just like the falling leaves

Twirling through an autumn breeze

And when the trees are bare as hollow bones

You’re my evergreen

On you’re my evergreen

You’re my evergreen

Oh you’re my evergreen

Written by Isaiah Johnson Fall 2020

Arranged by Isaiah Johnson

Recorded by Isaiah Johnson, Ian Downie, and Sam Eastman

Mixed and Mastered by Ian van Opijnen at Echoroom Media

Isaiah Johnson: Vocals, Acoustic Guitars

Sofía Chiarandini: Fiddle

Noah Harrington: Upright Bass

Ian Downie: Vocals

Chloe Koval: Vocals