Song Description

Here's a song about an army of corn marching on a town at midnight. (These things happen in Wisconsin.) Main guitars on this are a Vintage Modified Stratocaster and a Gretsch 5622T. The combination of the classic Strat tone and the Gretsch's Super HiLotron pickups is a recipe I personally love. The first single from the upcoming Penelope's Thrill album, "Twilight on Tunnel Road," due out on April 26, 2021. All the songs on "Twilight on Tunnel Road" are about Lonnie and Chloe, who grow up on adjacent farms on the edge of the Driftless Area of Southern Wisconsin. This song is about Chloe's recurring dream of a vast army of corn marching at midnight toward the town. Ever since she was a child, Chloe has dreamed about the billowing ocean of corn covering the undulating hills around their farmhouse--the tall thick stalks that towered above her head with leaves that looked like arms. They way the corn swayed in the wind made the stalks seem like people, like an orderly crowd of people standing in rows, or--by moonlight--a vast army. She dreamed about this corn army, sometimes imagining herself their queen. When she grew older, she would joke with Lonnie about this. Lonnie would call her Queen of the Corn and refer to cornfields as her troops. lyrics

Lyrics

When you're feeling so low,
getting so you're feeling so run down,
you're heading for the edge of town.

When your mind starts slipping,
when your head is tripping round,
you listen for a certain sound.

You go walking late at night, look at the distant lights
that flicker in the midnight sky.
You don't see no one. That's because you are going
deep beyond the edge of town.

Now the night wind's shifting,
looking at the cornfields stretching wide
like an army in the night.

You see corn troops moving,
marching through the midnight fields alive,
heading to the edge of town.

And the pine trees sifting...the messages drifting down
from the moon into your eyes.
Now the oak trees wonder why you stare up at the sky
so rootless and alone.

Noctilucent clouds are
drifting past the moon and I
wonder why you're looking down.

Armies of corn are marching
down the hillsides toward the town
sleeping silent in the night.
credits