Singled Out: Moonsville Collective's Long Gone

Moonsville Collective have released their new album, "A Hundred Highways", and to celebrate we asked Corey Adams to tell us about the track "Long Gone". Here is the story:

The well of the American songbook is abundant, pure, and rich. Characters that come to mind are Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt, Brownie McGhee, Stephen Foster, Muddy Waters, Gillian Welch, Dylan, Cash - you get it. I often find myself at the well, meditating on the posture of these giants, or the notes, or the melodies, or the ironic tales that have been passed down from song to song. When I first began writing in my early twenties, I wrote a lot of little blues songs, actually. Channeling John Hurt, or Muddy, or Woody. I can't say I was much of a blues singer, so I never really got anywhere with them, but the irony, humility, and humor often found in these tunes are kind of a basis for a lot of the writing I do.

Anyhow, I'd always wanted to write a number that has more of the moving progression rather than an eight-bar or 16-bar blues thing, and I'd messed around with this specific progression a lot over the years, waiting for the right story to find shelter in it. The song finally found me, and felt like it might be a suitable offering, so we put together this little folk/blues number on the record called "Long Gone."

I'd had the first line for years: "Woke up this morning, with an aching head, an empty bottle and a cold and empty bed, but now she's gone, long gone, and I'm all alone." I could never finish that, 'cause it wasn't my truth, you know? I've been with the same woman for 15 years now - it wasn't going to be a song for me. Unfortunately for a friend of mine, it was indeed destined to belong to him. So he has this woman, they go together for a few years, never quite finding the holy land together. Things began to crumble, as they often do, and they found themselves on the lonely side of the street. But it wasn't too long before she had a pretty similar replacement on board who had an uncanny resemblance to this guy I knew. Anyhow, long story short, the story in the song is a true story, with some bits of sorrow, irony, and jest. It was my best attempt as of late to offer something in honor of my favorite old-time singers.

My favorite line in the song is probably the last one: "Sometimes you get to be the boxer, but sometimes you gotta be the bag." It is also a little ode to a conversation my cousin and I always have about what Eddie Vedder is saying in a certain Pearl Jam song. So there's that. It's the opening track on the vinyl order, and we open our set with this song often. People always seem to enjoy the humor and feel of it all, and we hope you do, too.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here

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