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Midnight Streetcar

by Andrew Hyra

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about

This track was a demo sketch about two distantly related events captured in a unique way. One process of writing/recording I used when I was younger was to write in the cans. Hit record and follow a visual with stream of consciousness. I would come across a bit of melody that would bring up visions from different parts of my life and I would hit record to see what would come. Most of the time I was just fishing for ideas but occasionally a song would appear in full form. i used to call these bits accidents but I see now there was nothing in this process related to chance. It was a hyper focus that I had developed that allowed the feeling I was mining to manifest in a particular way.
When I was in college in New Orleans, I used to ride the streetcar to and from work down St. Charles avenue to my job in the restaurants/hotels downtown. Sometimes my return trip would happen late at night. I remember my fellow late night travelers as an odd lot of tourists, homeless people and workers, riding in the sultry midnight air, steel wheels a holler to mark our advance up and down the tracks.
One evening there was a girl near my age returning from work and she was falling asleep in her seat across from me. I was concerned for her and as I came to my stop and saw her still asleep, I stayed on the train. The streetcar line I was riding made a loop that took about an hour so I sat back and took in the night outside as an adjunct angel for this stranger on my line. New Orleans in the eighties was a wild place and me being college aged and newly away from home for the first time, it was full of adventure. So this midnight ride came back to me when I heard that a girlfriend of mine from college had just lost her baby after only a day in the world, hence the line in the song, it’s only days we get. Seemingly unrelated events came to me in the dream of creation as part of the same midnight ride. I could no longer comfort and protect somebody i had loved intimately at another point in my life. I think the ripple of love never goes away. I’ve written about this in songs before. So when I heard that she had lost her baby tragically, I mourned her loss. This song is that mourning and so many moments that I never recognized as loss on a midnight streetcar.

credits

released September 24, 2023
Andrew - Acoustic guitar, vocals
Steve Fontaine - Bass, string arrangement, mix/master

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Andrew Hyra Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

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