Written and recorded in July 2023 for 50/90, a sister event to FAWM (February Album Writing Month).
One of the FAWM & 50/90 traditions is called a "skirmish". Participants are given a prompt, and one hour to write a song based on that prompt. On this occasion, the prompt given by the skirmish host was "the witching hour".
Now, I live about 20 minutes away from Salem, visit there probably at least once a week, and I'm serving as a proofreader/editor on a graphic novel about the Salem witch trials that a friend is writing. But I tossed out the idea to make the song about witches, because I wanted to do something a little less on the nose. So a different idea started to form in my head, and I began envisioning a person holed up inside a house, waiting for an approaching danger. As to whether the danger is of this world or another one, I'll leave that up to the listener to decide. I also didn't want to tie the story down to a time period, aside from the fact that a shotgun is mentioned in the lyrics. So that's at least 150 years to play with. I kind of have my own idea of when and where the story takes place, but I'm not sure I want to impose it on the listener.
This song has a long intro before the lyrics come in, but I like it that way. It's a very different song for me. I don't really know what genre this is... American gothic blues, maybe? Whatever it is, in 30+ years of songwriting, I've never done anything that sounds like it.
