Blue Water Highway Interview

Doug Burke:

Blue Water Highway is an alternative indie rock band from the Texas Gulf Coast. The band is releasing its third album, Paper Airplanes, following the critically-acclaimed releases of Things We Carry and Heartbreak City. The founders, Zack Kibodeaux and Greg Essington, met in high school where they became accomplished musicians. Zack, who went on to study to become an opera singer, recruited fellow opera singer Catherine Clarke to fill out the three-part harmonies. They added Kyle James Smith on bass, and the ensemble has worked together since 2013. For the new album Paper Airplanes, they've enlisted Nashville producer Cason Cooley to guide the new album. Cason has produced Ingrid Michaelson, American Authors and Ben Rector. Together, they have created a unique, sonic soundscape of acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, powerful lead vocals layered with elegant harmonies. Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke. Today, I am so thrilled to have the entire band, Blue Water Highway, here with me, Zack Kibodeaux, Catherine Clarke, Greg Essington and Kyle Smith. Welcome, band.

Kyle Smith:

Howdy, howdy.

Catherine Clarke:

Hello.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Hello.

Greg Essington:

Hi, hi.

Doug Burke:

So who was that? In what order?

Kyle Smith:

Well, I'm Kyle.

Catherine Clarke:

I'm Catherine.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Zack.

Greg Essington:

And Greg.

Doug Burke:

Your band is named after a highway. Tell me where this origin of the name came from.

Zack Kibodeaux:

So two of us, that's Zack, me speaking, and Greg, we grew up down in the Brazosport area of Texas. That's sort of an hour south of Houston, Texas, down on the Gulf Coast. There's a highway that goes from Surfside to Galveston, Texas. That's called Bluewater Highway. That was kind of the big geographical feature just growing up in our area. So that was the name.

Doug Burke:

Now, I've not driven this highway, but I've seen pictures of Galveston and I don't recall the water being that blue. Is it?

Catherine Clarke:

That's exactly what I was going to say. It's kind of a misnomer, I believe. But it's wishful thinking.

Zack Kibodeaux:

There's about one time a year when it actually turns blue. I don't know. Maybe we missed it. Maybe in January. Normally, it's pretty brown.

Doug Burke:

So this is like Texas marketing, right? There's like a joke, this Bluewater Highway next to the brown Gulf of Mexico. Is that...

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah. We like to tell tall tales in Texas. It's really part of our tradition. Everything's bigger. The water is bluer. But in this case, yeah starting from brown, that's a bit of a stretch.

Doug Burke:

You had two critically-acclaimed albums out, Things We Carry from 2015 and Heartbreak City from 2018. We're here to talk about some of your newer stuff, Paper Airplanes, which I've had the pleasure of getting a prerelease listen to. It really seems to me like an evolution and maybe a maturation. I don't like to use that word too often because all your work is great, but you're moving in a direction that's slightly different.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, I'd say that's for sure. We liked to mess around with a lot of different styles of music. I mean, hopefully, it all comes out sounding like our own sound, but I think figuring out what we do as a band and what we're interested in, all the lessons we've learned, what we want to say, has really come together in this album. Feel really good about what we came up with. We feel like this is a great springboard.

Kyle Smith:

Yeah, there's a thing that I think is worth noting is despite this record coming out when it is, you might think that a lot of these tunes are tunes created after those previous records. But what's interesting about our sound, you could say, a lot of these songs are actually as old or could be older than some of those tunes you're mentioning. We do appreciate always as we mature as a band those that notice that, but it's interesting. We've kind of been sitting on a lot of these songs for a good while. We're just now finally bringing them out to the public.

Doug Burke:

I think your earlier albums were, in some respects, labeled modern Americana. But I felt like this album was really just classic American. It wasn't, to me, as rooted in that Galveston, Texas origin, but really was from America and not necessarily a southern place, I guess.

Catherine Clarke:

I was going to say, being from Texas I feel like we always have that element in our music. It's fortunate that there's a lot of different music that exists here in Texas. But our interest as a band lie in all kind of stuff, and so we kind of have to figure out how to bring that into a sound that works with all of us. Especially now that we've traveled so much around America, I think that we're bringing in more of those influences when we recorded this record.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Traveling certainly gave us an overall American perspective. That's another thing we were sort of shooting for on this album. We wanted to give you the effect like after you were finished watching just classic Americana film. We were heavily influenced by American films, Sandlot, Interstellar, even Superman, just kind of heartland American movies, October Sky, that sort of thing.

Doug Burke:

Interesting. Yeah, you can feel that in the album. Zack, you and Catherine trained in opera. Is that accurate?

Zack Kibodeaux:

That is correct. We met at Texas State University in San Marcos, south of Austin. We were opera singers. That was the career. I was kind of writing songs on the side.

Catherine Clarke:

We had the same voice teacher, so that's how we met.

Doug Burke:

No kidding. I guess one was tenor and one was soprano? Is that....

Zack Kibodeaux:

You called it.

Catherine Clarke:

That's right.

Doug Burke:

Getting better at my job here. And you maintain those roles in the band.

Zack Kibodeaux:

We do, we do, yeah. Keep the tenor and the soprano. We try to get Catherine singing... There are some influences in the music, but I don't know if we've quite perfected it yet. It's kind of like an ongoing mission to try and figure out a way to put opera into our style of music.

Catherine Clarke:

We try and sneak it in here and there. There's a track on our new record that has some pretty strong classical music influences. So even if it's not specifically opera, we try and bring the classical influence in a little bit.

Doug Burke:

So maybe you'll do the new Tommy, the rock opera, for us one day.

Zack Kibodeaux:

That's right.

Doug Burke:

As a career, we have something to look forward to. But let's talk about the title cut from the album, Paper Airplanes.

Zack Kibodeaux:

That was like the first song we wrote. This is one of the older songs Kyle was talking about before. We'd always wanted to make this record and we wrote this song first. That sort of summed up kind of all the themes and tied all the rest of the songs together. We always used that song even to write other songs sort of based on the themes in that song.

Doug Burke:

I hadn't really thought about it until I gave an intense listen to this song, but paper airplanes are such a childhood memory thing of hopes and dreams and visions. What's this song about?

Zack Kibodeaux:

This song's really about how to dream, how to treat dreams as an adult. Especially as a musician myself, a musician with a family, supporting a family, you have dreams but you also have to make sacrifices. You have to figure out kind of where your boundaries are, like how long to stick to the dream at the expense of your other responsibilities and how to dream realistically. It's sort of like a spectrum. Keep struggling with how to be responsible, but also not lose the wonder from childhood. That's kind of the idea. Actually, this was summed up really well with one of our favorite authors, C. S. Lewis, in one of his essays where he talks about the concept of enchantment. He says people go through a lot of stages in life. You're enchanted as a child and then you get kind of jaded. Becoming re-enchanted is kind of the goal, seeing all the normal things in life with the wonder you saw as a child, but with the maturity of an adult.

Doug Burke:

The song has so many cool sonic elements in it. It starts with this almost U2-like organ, ethereal, airy thing, and then there's this rubbery bassline that comes in.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, buddy.

Doug Burke:

And this electronic sound that's really the signature sound of your band, the combination of those things. And then when you get to the break with the power chords, it has all of the gumbo of your band in one song.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Nice use of the word gumbo.

Kyle Smith:

I like that you called that out all in one go because so many times in bands like us, we write a song and then we go to the studio and we put all these things in. We're getting just as excited about the song and putting every ounce of ourselves into this song. We're like, "Is anyone going to appreciate this to the level we..." So we really thank you for saying all that because that's... We love everything we put in that track, especially in those power chords. We were all ear to ear after hearing it in the speakers.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, I think the listeners are going to love it because I did. And then the way it finishes with this haunting wall of sonic sound... And it has this progression like you were describing from the first verse is that C. S. Lewis childhood enchantment, and then the second verse is the disenchantment-

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

Especially the line... Yeah, go ahead.

Zack Kibodeaux:

No, no, no. I'm just glad you caught that because that's exactly what we're trying to do. It's like we do what we have to do. Now, you're kind of back in the 9:00 to 5:00 cubicle. Hey, be realistic here. Your dreams don't matter. That's exactly what we're going for. Thanks for catching that.

Doug Burke:

The line I like is, "Lately, I don't put my faith anymore on airplanes."

Zack Kibodeaux:

That's right, yeah. Yep. And it actually kind of a mirror to reality in our own band where sort of after our second record, we hit something of a wall, at least creatively. It's funny. This is the first time this has ever happened to me, but I went back to those lyrics and when I read that, I felt like the guy from Office Space a little bit. I know this is funny from a-

Doug Burke:

Wait, which guy from Office Space?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Well, the main character that busts his-

Doug Burke:

Michael?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, yeah. It's funny that a musician says this because that's like the antithesis of a cubicle office guy, is a musician. But in a way, at least I felt this way, just stuck. And so I listened to that verse and I was like, "You know what? Should take a little bit of your own medicine here." Break the copier in your life, whatever that is. Fly your airplane.

Kyle Smith:

Meanwhile, I'm sitting somewhere with my red stapler, looking like an idiot.

Doug Burke:

Looking like Dwight.

Zack Kibodeaux:

This analogy's going off the rails, but I think you understand what I'm saying. Anyways, it inspired us to write the album. It's like okay, let's make this awesome. Let's go ahead and dream a little bit with all the things we've learned about also how to responsible. So yeah, find an enchantment again.

Doug Burke:

What else you want to say about Paper Airplanes?

Catherine Clarke:

Well, I think the music video that we have coming out for it's pretty cool. It'll be out, I guess, in a couple weeks. It's interesting. It follows the perspective of a little girl who her dad's an astronaut. She kind of wants to follow in his footsteps, but she's has to do all the little girl things. It's a really cool video that kind of... It fits the song great, so we're really excited about that coming out soon.

Doug Burke:

So it's a STEM message for little girls.

Catherine Clarke:

Yeah, basically. It's interesting. Our bass player, Kyle, has his PhD in physics, so a lot of the spacier elements on this record wouldn't be... Oftentimes, you'd hear Zack from one room like, "Kyle, give me science words," for writing songs. The spacey kind of element that we tried to bring in sonically was often inspired by some of Kyle's science knowledge.

Doug Burke:

Well, we know who to call when Houston, we have a problem.

Catherine Clarke:

Right.

Kyle Smith:

That's right.

Doug Burke:

Let's talk about one your love songs of sorts on the album, Sign Language.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Oh, yeah. That's one of our favorite tracks. That kind of started, as a lot of our songs do, with Greg was sort of fiddling around with a musical theme. I had a word bank of titles and a lot of inspired-by titles, especially with this album which had a clear theme already and we were trying to write for that theme. Sign Language, I had this title in my pocket. It was kind of like just... This is a communication song. It just went from there. We all wrote it together in a room. Greg had this piano riff. Catherine and I worked on the lyrics. Kyle had this real... I don't know how to describe it, this drumbeat that was unusual but was almost this stuttered kind of communication thing.

Kyle Smith:

When we got a chance to finally kind of write with some of this stuff and we picked up Greg's piano part that he had and we kind of put that together and just put a couple of other layers on it, I think we had, at that time, a drum beat and a couple pulsing synth lines, just whatever we wanted to mess with and just had that looping. I think actually despite me playing bass, Greg even had the bass guitar on. It was just kind of putting on different hats to create a song. That one was really special to us because it kind of just came together after we had all those sounds blasting in the room.

Doug Burke:

I really like the harmonies on this. I think I read somewhere where you guys are inspired by Fleetwood Mac?

Catherine Clarke:

Yeah, definitely.

Doug Burke:

That band notoriously had some interpersonal issues, love issues in the band. They wrote songs about it to let it hang out there. This is a song about a couple that is kind of not getting along and figures out a way to get along through this sign language. The harmonies that you layer into it really communicate a message, I think.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, harmony's a big part of our band, that's for sure. It was a focus for this. We wanted that to be a focus thing. It's funny. Catherine doesn't always find herself in the writing part of the process. I was kind of giving her a hard time about it. It's like, you should come in. It really will add something. She's like, "No, no, no, no, no." We had kind of hit a wall with where the song was going. She came in and... I mean, it broke us out of the rut we were in and helped us finish writing it.

Doug Burke:

How do you write a song all four of you together like that? How does that happen? How does that work?

Zack Kibodeaux:

I mean, a bunch of different ways. I'll have an idea and I'll bring it to the band. We'll finish it, arrange it. Sometimes two of us will write it, Greg and I. This one, we were all in a room at the same time. It really just kind of...

Catherine Clarke:

I was going to say, something that happened uniquely I think, on this record was sometimes, just to break out of the monotony, even though none of us are drummers, sometimes Greg would sit down at the drums or he'd sit down with Kyle's bass because we all kind of play a little bit of some instruments. Greg and Kyle especially can play basically everything. Sometimes, we like to switch up what we're playing just to jam a little bit and see what comes up. Often, when you're playing on an instrument you're not super familiar with, you might come up with something that's like, "Ooh, that's kind of cool." So I think we did that specifically with this song. I think Kyle mentioned Greg sitting down with the bass and Kyle coming up with an off-the-wall drum part.

Kyle Smith:

What's really cool about situations when you do that is... Because that rut Zack's talking about can come because you are using the same kind of faculties to create the ideas. But when someone else is put in the position of creation like that, for example, Greg playing bass, he's a guitar player primarily in our band and so he approaches the bass a little bit more like a guitar. He'll come up with different ideas. I'm the bass player, but I don't usually make the drum parts, and so I might approach the drum part a little bit differently. It definitely creates unique ideas that I think were extra special about this song.

Catherine Clarke:

And as far as vocals go, I think because Zack and I have been singing together for so long, going back to college more than 10 years now, we were able to pick up on the way we each sing something. So if he puts an emphasis on a word or sings it a specific way and we really want to convey that... In a lot of classical singing, you learn to convey your emotion just by the way you say the word. We try and really do that in the way we sing. Even in the way I sing harmony, I try and match that emotion specifically just by the way he says a word and vice versa.

Greg Essington:

And specifically the vocals on this one, I think I remember you two kind of changing the melody after thinking about the harmony. It was like, "Oh, this song is going to be more of a duet, so sing a lot of harmony on it at the same time." So y'all had to go back and rethink the melody because of trying to add that.

Catherine Clarke:

Because we were like, "Which one's the melody? Which ones the harmony?"

Greg Essington:

Yeah, exactly.

Catherine Clarke:

We wanted it to kind of be ambiguous, so you can't really always tell which one is the melody and which one's the harmony.

Doug Burke:

How do you know... And I guess it's different for every song. How do you know when a song is done?

Kyle Smith:

It's never done, I would say.

Catherine Clarke:

That's when you get a producer that says, "Stop adding things to it," or "It sounds good. I think it's finished."

Zack Kibodeaux:

That was kind of a point of not contention, just... Specifically with this song, it's funny you mention because there were so many parts of this song that we all kind of wanted to bask in just a little bit longer. It was hard to make edits on this song, I think, because we don't want any... We always talk about trimming the fat. You don't ever trim it down so much that you trim down the substance. Finding that balance on this song was especially difficult because there were so many parts of this song that we just wanted to linger in a little bit longer.

Doug Burke:

Interesting. I can't imagine what it must be like to have four incredibly talented people like yourself in a room and everybody agreeing that the song is done. But I really like the way the song is done.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Thanks.

Doug Burke:

Can I tell you my favorite song? I don't usually have a favorite song on the album, but maybe it's, in my opinion, the most radio friendly of your songs. My opinion doesn't really matter that much, but I love Grateful. The reason I love Grateful is I want to see you guys play this live. I love the anthemic chorus. I could just see the audience sing along in my head. When I was listening to the album, I was like, "This is the song I want to see these guys play live." That's my own take on Grateful.

Catherine Clarke:

We have been playing it live in the tiny little bit we have been playing live recently. It's really fun, so yeah.

Doug Burke:

Are you getting that audience reaction that I'm describing?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Oh, totally. I mean, they really love that one, especially live. It comes across, which we're thankful for because you never quite know.

Greg Essington:

It's got that energy. Get people clapping along in the breakdown chorus at the end.

Catherine Clarke:

Message, I think, everybody can probably relate to.

Kyle Smith:

It has all these elements of a older Americana tradition or kind of gospel-y traditions. I don't know what you'd call it, but just that thick choir sound rooted in piano, I think, makes it special on the record because, I mean, we layered so much vocals on there. It was such a great way to really showcase what we can do vocally in this band. We had a lot of fun making that one. I think that's what a lot of people resonate with, too, is just so many people love hearing all that choir sound.

Catherine Clarke:

Sounds like a fun track, and it was.

Doug Burke:

You really feel like you're in the church of rock and roll, the way it starts. And there's this, like you said, this choir sound to the whole thing, and then it makes you want to sing along by the time you get to the whoa chorus part.

Zack Kibodeaux:

It's also funny because I wrote that song as a reminder. Obviously, I think it's pretty self-explanatory, the message of the song, but I find myself dipping down into self-pity. Maybe it's just me. I don't know if anybody else does. At least some part of - 

Kyle Smith:

No, you're the only one.

Catherine Clarke:

Just you.

Zack Kibodeaux:

And so it's great to have a bunch of people singing along to that song, myself included, where it's like you get to consistently poke fun at yourself. It's almost like you get to hear your wife or your who knows, maybe your grandma, "Hey, look. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You got a lot to be thankful for," and get to sing that. It really kind of puts you in your place. I mean, it does when I'm singing it. It makes me just laugh at myself, no matter what's going on.

Doug Burke:

I like the descending scale in the chorus. It's just such a nice touch. Who does that? I don't know.

Zack Kibodeaux:

I think that little flair was... Maybe that was Greg in combination with our producer, Cason Cooley, who was using these sonic things to tie it in with the rest of the record. Because this is a bit of an outlier. It's a little more gospel-centered than the rest of the record. That descending line put a little stardust on the song.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, it is like stardust line. And then at the end, is that a ukulele or some sort?

Kyle Smith:

I think it's a mandolin at the end? 

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, Greg, I think you busted out - 

Greg Essington:

Yeah.

Catherine Clarke:

Greg can play everything. So if you're like, "Oh, I think it needs a little mandolin," just hand it to Greg and he'll figure it out.

Greg Essington:

Oh, I have that in my backpack.

Doug Burke:

So mandolin, banjo. What else do you play?

Greg Essington:

I play according, not so much on this record. I think there was one song we did accordion on. Dog Days, maybe. But yeah, kind of our previous stuff and our live show, we definitely... I play accordion and guitar and then I-

Catherine Clarke:

Piano.

Greg Essington:

... play some piano in the live show as well. Assorted stringed instruments and keyboard instruments.

Doug Burke:

It's nice to have the versatile, all-around athlete in the band when you need a sound.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yes. Luckily, Greg and Kyle can both do that. We all play keyboard, to a certain level. It's nice to have Greg and Kyle jump around on various instruments.

Doug Burke:

It's also nice to have vocal instruments with multi-octave ranges like you guys do, too. That doesn't hurt when you layer that on top.

Kyle Smith:

That's right, that's right.

Doug Burke:

Actually, the most radio-friendly song is Council Grove, in my opinion. Again, my opinion doesn't matter because we're here to talk about you guys. But I had to look up where Council Grove is. I don't think our listeners know, and I don't know if it's based on this, but I like to do this. There's a Council Grove in the middle of Kansas.

Catherine Clarke:

That's it.

Doug Burke:

Okay.

Greg Essington:

Yeah, that's the one. Dad's family's from Council Grove, Kansas. He grew up there. I still have relatives there. That song came about because in some of our travels and playing shows, we played some shows around the Flint Hills of Kansas, which is where Council Grove is located. We stayed with my family. I think after that, Zack and I sat down. Zack had kind of had an idea for a song using Council Grove as an analogy for how we think about the past. We like to say the quote, "nostalgia is like grammar."

Zack Kibodeaux:

It's like a grammar lesson.

Greg Essington:

It's like a grammar lesson. Past perfect, present tense.

Zack Kibodeaux:

You got it.

Greg Essington:

Got it. Just took me a second.

Catherine Clarke:

Nice. I never heard that. Well yeah, because Greg, that's the place that you kind of always go back to in the summer, right?

Greg Essington:

Yeah. It was a place I spent a lot of time with my family growing up.

Catherine Clarke:

So it's kind of that idea that you always remember your childhood as being perfect.

Greg Essington:

Perfect. Yeah, it was perfect.

Catherine Clarke:

You think about your childhood Christmases. You think about your childhood this and that and it was always perfect. Was it really?

Greg Essington:

Yeah.

Catherine Clarke:

Or was it the way it is now?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Right. You fall into feeling like you were born in the wrong time, for whatever reason. Sometimes, it's a good reminder to think maybe you're right where you're supposed to be. Everybody has stuff they got to deal with in their own time. You can't glorify the past too much or vilify it too much.

Doug Burke:

I imagine there's people who are running away from Council Grove, and there's people who've never left and there's no place they'd rather be.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of like a small town America situation, maybe. It's great to visit those kind of places. Council Grove is just one of those beautiful American...

Catherine Clarke:

I think it's easy for people to assume, especially people that live in bigger cities or near bigger cities, that small towns, what do they have to offer? But we've been to so many. Not just Council Grove, but all around the United States. Those places have just as cool of stories. Oftentimes, they have things preserved big cities won't have anymore that you get to go see. Those small towns have special things about them, too.

Kyle Smith:

We were just talking about, actually, this song just the other night, just kind of trying to talk about what the song kind of means. We were brainstorming some video ideas and got talking about the heartland. Because of course, Council Grove is in Kansas. You think of the Flint Hills and a lot of these things that Kansas has but since we've traveled so much, there's nuance in comparing all these things. Iowa is not the same as Kansas, not the same as Nebraska, but there's overlap. Some of those overlaps overlap with what we know in Texas. I think it's those overlaps that kind of glue us all together. Just driving around, getting that perspective, it's really cool. What I think I would... If you don't know Council Grove because I didn't know Council Grove before Greg, but I think if they never get a chance to go there, just try to think of what all these small towns have to offer. Think about someone who grew up in a place like that, how their perception of the world... It's an interesting perspective. It's different than the city. Cath and I grew up in Austin. That's a different perspective than being in some of these smaller towns. But just because they're smaller doesn't mean they don't have something to offer. There's charm. There's story. They're people. It's fascinating to kind of think about all that and think of that song representing some of that as well.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like you're in the city... I mean, that's kind of the point of the song. It's the hustle and bustle of life. You're going to this place that was the safe mythical place. Now, on the other hand, you go there and you see there's this bell in the center of town that used to ring whenever there was real trouble. You're like, "Huh. Well, I guess you really can't escape it."

Kyle Smith:

Yeah. Trouble is everywhere.

Zack Kibodeaux:

That's right. There's no mythical paradise you can escape to.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, that bell came up in the Google search on Council Grove. There's a statue and a bell in the center of town that I guess everybody congregates there from time to time for good and bad and different times?

Greg Essington:

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think it meant more in the past than it does today. It's one of those tourist towns, a lot of historical markers and a lot of those kind of places to go visit.

Doug Burke:

It's a tourist... People go there to see what, the migration west?

Greg Essington:

Yeah, it's on the... Well, I say a tourist... I mean, it's one of the stops on the Santa Fe Trail, so there's lots of history there. People who are doing those road trips and want to go see the historical markers and things like that, it's kind of known for that in that part of Kansas.

Catherine Clarke:

Also, the Flint Hills.

Greg Essington:

The Flint Hills, the vistas. The drive through the Flint Hills, there's a stop.

Zack Kibodeaux:

I think that's still one of my favorite accomplishments, at least that we've... To me, the Flint Hills sounds like our song, at least to me. The first time Greg took me there, because that's where his... It was like a hometown, or at least his family's hometown. He would always tell me... Because we went to high school together and we've known each other for a long time. He'd have pictures of Flint Hills in his house. When we first drove there, just entering into that place kind of comes out of nowhere. It kind of comes out of all this Kansas flatness. It's like Dorothy going from black and white to color when you get into the Flint Hills. Driving, I was like, "This has got to be the perfect driving music track." And I'm really happy with how we did that with the pulsating, propelling feeling of the drums and some of the synthesizer sounds.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, I like the way you have this bop, bop, bop lyric in the beginning with the claps and the drums, and then the explosion in the chorus with the whoa, whoa. I think you actually have to edit your lyric. You just have it as oh, and it's much more than oh when the chorus explodes.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Nice.

Greg Essington:

Yes.

Doug Burke:

It's like this big whoa. I can see the audience singing along to this. This is another one I want to see you guys play live. I want to sing along with this one, the anthemic chorus.

Greg Essington:

Yeah, definitely looking forward to that as well. You're saying we need an exclamation mark after the whoa in the lyrics?

Doug Burke:

I think it's W-H-O-A-H. It's more than oh. You got it as O-H and it's larger than that. And you say it twice.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Whoa, three exclamation points.

Doug Burke:

Why are you saying whoa? What are you trying to say there?

Zack Kibodeaux:

I mean, why does anybody say whoa? Tearing my heart to pieces is the lyric after that, so it's a release. It's a scream. I don't know. It's a sigh. It's like everything you... You're losing it from needing a place to escape to. You want to go back to the way it was, and you don't really know it the way it was. The way it was is not the way you think it is.

Greg Essington:

Yep.

Zack Kibodeaux:

That's the whole lesson.

Doug Burke:

I just hear Keith Jackson, the college football announcer, saying, "Whoa, Nelly," and "There he goes again," you know?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Right.

Doug Burke:

It's like that Midwestern whoa.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Hey, there you go. I didn't think of it that way, but if that's the way you want to, that's great.

Doug Burke:

All right. Let's talk about Me and the Electric Man. This is about your grandfather.

Zack Kibodeaux:

This is another song that was older. We wrote it right after Paper Airplanes. I was fiddling around with a synthesizer sound on my keyboard. It was kind of a weird moment. I don't know if you know of that movie Frequency. I think it had... I'm trying to think of the actress. Jim Caviezel and man, who's the other one? I'm blanking out.

Kyle Smith:

It's not Randy Quaid, right?

Zack Kibodeaux:

No, Dennis Quaid.

Kyle Smith:

Dennis Quaid.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Well done, Kyle. Thank you for pitching that to me.

Kyle Smith:

Could be Randy Quaid. I haven't seen that one.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Anyway, so in that movie, they have... One is passed away. The father's passed away and there's a way for them to communicate via radio, spiritual radio kind of thing. I felt that way when I found the synthesizer sound. It reminded me of my grandfather, who was just this old-school guy from the Greatest Generation. He was an electrician. I always thought that was funny because he grew up in an era where a lot of people didn't even have electricity, or it was just becoming popular in people's homes. He ended up having kind of a futuristic job. I thought, "Well, that's perfect for the theme of the record." It's that spaceship, futuristic element, but also that barn. We always talked about how sonically, this record sounding like a spaceship in a barn. And lyrically, too, it having rooted values in a modern world. So the lyrics kind of go with the music, the soundscape. I thought that lyrically and sonically, that's kind of a perfect thing to put together. He lived out in the countryside and used to take me all around into our small town doing odd jobs in his truck, fixing stuff. He was a handyman, but he was also this really faithful guy with old-school values. He just sort of taught everything, by example by living a good life. Every time I play that, it's really a way for me to... It's kind of a spooky thing, kind of like this communication happens where I get to sing about him to him.

Doug Burke:

Do you think he's feeling it? Do you think he's listening? Do you get that sense ever when you're playing it?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Oh, yeah. Totally. It's spooky.

Doug Burke:

Okay, so I had to look this up. St. Mary's Star of the Sea on fire, through the roof of St. Mary's Star of the Sea on fire. And I have one for you guys I bet you didn't even know. There are two St. Mary's Star of the Seas that have burned down in the last 40 years. One's in Baltimore and one's in Far Rockaway, New York, Long Island. Which one is this?

Kyle Smith:

Wow.

Zack Kibodeaux:

It's neither because this-

Doug Burke:

It's neither.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Because this church is probably in a smaller place than any of those. That's really cool, though. I had no idea so that's good research. 

Greg Essington:

Yeah, wow.

Zack Kibodeaux:

That's incredible.

Doug Burke:

So you just made up St. Mary's Star of the Sea and it wasn't even based on one of those two churches?

Zack Kibodeaux:

No, it's not made up. It's real. It actually did... This was a church that my grandfather's father helped build. All of his information is in a, what do you call it, a time box, one of those boxes in the cornerstone built into the church. He worked on it all his life. He was a parishioner there, and his family. That's where my parents were married. It was like a community center in this small town we grew up in.

Catherine Clarke:

But isn't it not called Star of the Sea?

Zack Kibodeaux:

No, it is. It's St. Mary Star of the Sea.

Catherine Clarke:

Oh.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Because-

Doug Burke:

And what town is it in?

Zack Kibodeaux:

This is Freeport, Texas. There's this little community of several different towns in the Brazosport area, Lake Jackson, Clute, Freeport, Texas. They're chemical company towns on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas. They're coastal communities. But Star of the Sea... So it's St. Mary Star of the Sea, and there's a picture. There's a stain glass window of her looking out over the sea, looking out over the boats in the Gulf. We would always go to that church because he was kind of the town maintenance man. He's an electrician, but he could do everything. Anytime anything broke, we would be up there in the attic in the summertime in the heat. So you just had this image of this faithful man. Always had his rosary with him. He's a very patient man, very hardworking, worked on the church. And then there was a night where the church burned down. I remember that. It was crazy because he... I mean, him and I both. I was with him. We had spent so much time working on this church. It was like all that work... When something burns like that, it almost feels like it's all for nothing, which of course it's not. I mean, I think somebody left a candle burning and it caught the whole thing on fire, caught the whole church on fire. So I went with him and we stood in the church with it all burnt down. Consequently, the cross didn't burn, which I thought was pretty spooky as well. I'm using that word spooky, but there's a lot of spooky-

Doug Burke:

Okay, now wait a second. I got to interrupt you with the spookiest thing of all. In the South Baltimore church, St. Mary Star of the Sea, the cross also survived and it also had a time capsule in it.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Yeah, that is crazy.

Catherine Clarke:

Whoa.

Kyle Smith:

Wow.

Zack Kibodeaux:

I promise, I'm not making any of that up.

Kyle Smith:

That is spooky.

Zack Kibodeaux:

I don't know. I don't know.

Doug Burke:

In the article, Father Josh Laws is holding the time capsule. He's saying, "I may open it up someday." Okay, but he couldn't open up in the aftermath of the damage which was caused by 68-mile-an-hour winds and two inches of rainfall in 24 hours in South Baltimore. You got to look this up. This is just too coincidental.

Zack Kibodeaux:

We're going to look that up, for sure.

Catherine Clarke:

Wow.

Greg Essington:

Wow.

Zack Kibodeaux:

It was devastating, though, I mean obviously to our community. But the cool thing was he lived to see it built back. He helped build it back so by the time he died, the church was back up.

Catherine Clarke:

And his funeral was at that church.

Zack Kibodeaux:

His funeral was at the church as well.

Doug Burke:

What I like about this song is one of the classic songwriting techniques is the use of double entendres. You have a lot of very clever double entendres about electricity, lines like, "Would you say I've measured up? I'm more grounded now." It just makes you pay attention to the lyrics.

Zack Kibodeaux:

I'm glad you noticed that. I hope I didn't lay it on too thick in that song, but I did want the impression of electricity, electrician work to... I wanted people to get that impression when they were listening to it. That was definitely employed, for sure.

Doug Burke:

What I also like is how as a band, you tried to create the sound of an electrician and working with electricity. Talk to me about that. How did you do that and what were you thinking? Or is that just me hearing things?

Kyle Smith:

Well, I think it goes back to our themes that we tried to maintain in the whole record, this spaceship in the barn. One of the things when we always talked about that, I think the opening of the new reboot of the Star Trek series where it shows Captain Kirk before he's Captain Kirk driving through farmland except in the background, you see these futuristic spaceships. That seems to suggest that they're in the sort of time that's just like today, except they have this futuristic technology. But they would still go into a bar that just looks like a bar you would see in the middle of Texas or something. They would have a jukebox, but it would also have a floating robot that's serving you drinks or whatever it is. Whatever that concept of the juxtaposition of those two worlds is, futuristic something with the old, whatever that means, rustic... I don't know... we always tried to capture that in the music. I think when Zack talks about his grandfather in this way, it was so interesting because I definitely, in just learning all the stuff and science that I did, you do try to transport yourself back to the world of a Thomas Edison or something and try to think of what this guy was coming up with was revolutionary. Or pick whoever is your favorite scientist. It really doesn't matter because they're always trying to push that boundary. They're doing something beyond the times. Anyway, it amounted to various things in the music where, I don't know. We do love things like acoustic guitars and pianos and a raw set of vocals of harmony, but we also are big fans of synthesizers and just crazy electronic sounds that we can create and just, I don't know, just see what materializes. Really, it was just playing with a bunch of those sounds and seeing what started to convey those emotions that I think the song, at its core, was trying to convey.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's that pulsating synth is kind of the root of the thing. It's like this life force that's running through the song. Yeah, that current. That's what-

Doug Burke:

Current. That's what it is. It does sound like a current.

Zack Kibodeaux:

That was the goal. That was the genesis of really the... I think that started before... The current sound was the sound that really kicked off the song, that frequency, current.

Doug Burke:

Well, it really is uniquely a Blue Water Highway sound that you've packaged together in this song. It's really a unique voice in American music. I hope people listen to the album and love it as much as I did. I have to say, I don't always know the artist before I get introduced to them. And then in your case, it has been such an enormous delight to discover your work. We're living in this pandemic which hopefully, we'll get a vaccine distributed and everybody'll get back out on the road and the clubs will reopen and I will get to see you guys live because you guys are going places. You've got a sound that people should pay attention to. I'm impressed.

Catherine Clarke:

Thank you.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Thank you so much for that.

Kyle Smith:

Thank you, thank you.

Catherine Clarke:

Wow. Thank you. We hope to be out on the road soon, too. We definitely, definitely agree.

Doug Burke:

Is there anything you guys want to promote, talk about, tell our audience about?

Zack Kibodeaux:

Just letting everybody know that our record's going to be coming out in March 12. We have released, I think, almost all the songs we've mentioned.

Kyle Smith:

Yeah, Paper Airplanes comes out February 19. It's actually out now on Patreon. If anyone's listening and wants to jump on that, they could definitely get a exclusive, early access to that song. But yeah, just follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Spotify.

Catherine Clarke:

I would say the big thing, a way to help us, especially right now and especially nationwide touring isn't a thing as much, is if you listen to our music and you like it, share it. Share it on social media. Share it with your friends, your family. That helps us get the word out when we can't go physically be in places.

Doug Burke:

I have created the Blue Water Highway songbook of my favorite Blue Water Highway songs on our website, backstorysong.com. Please share that Spotify playlist with your friends. It's the easiest way to get these guys paid by Spotify when people listen to the entire songbook of their work. Once you start it, it's addictive. It's like that's your radio station for the day because you will just be consumed by this band's work. I have to thank you guys. This has really been a pleasure. Thank you, Zack, Catherine, Greg and Kyle from Blue Water Highway. I can't wait to see you. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you, DJ Wyatt Schmidt. Thank you M. C. Owens, our social media director. Please do share our Backstory Song podcast episodes with your friends so that our listener base can...

Catherine Clarke:

Thank you for having us.

Zack Kibodeaux:

Thank you.

Greg Essington:

Thank you.