Prey
By Michael McNevin
Click to listen to Michael McNevin’s song Prey.
2020 was a kitchen sink of history and hardship and hope. So much happened, it could probably be a 25-minute album side of songs, akin to Dark Side of The Moon, or Alice’s Restaurant. The song Prey jumps around some, with vignettes, symbology. I usually write straight ahead story songs, linear start to finish, easy to follow word pictures. This one has the word pictures, too; but it’s a little different - it has threads running right through it, that tie several topics together, that aforementioned 2020 kitchen sink. It came out this way for a reason I guess, a song I felt worthy of writing and recording. Here’s some of the why and what behind the lyrics.
The semi-hidden references begin in the first verse, “Asleep by 8:45, like a one-two punch.” On the surface, that is a nod to the working class, low wages, survival. The subtext though, the specific line about 8:45 minutes, is a reference to George Floyd’s passing. In the news, as we all discovered, 8 minutes and 45 seconds was the reported amount of time that George had a knee on his neck.
The BLM theme shows up again at the end of Prey, this time with the voice of Rayshard Brooks, who fell asleep in his car at a Wendy’s drive-through in Atlanta. Simply out on a burger run, Rayshard was killed by police in the parking lot, as he ran away from them. It was the day before his daughter’s eighth birthday. Part of the song's intent is to remember Rayshard Brooks and his family, and George Floyd, too.
The middle verses reference other things about us; humanity, as a species and society acting and building within nature. Our ingenuity and promise are sometimes a step forward and then two steps back. With all our drive and industry, we jinx ourselves with our own evolution.
The evolution in the lyric starts with a pterodactyl in a tree, as a long look backwards. That is then compared to the dawn of mankind, but in the here and now; our survival, as prey, as predator. From the demise of the dinosaurs, up to The Wright Brothers, that is a page from any old book. The wings and tech and industry of previous centuries they built on, to figure out flight, lead to more of the same talents of a society that took a few people in a rocket-ride up to the moon with a jar of Tang. A triumph, and a another long-view perspective of how we're doing down here on the planet. Our everyday gifts are a blessing, and a powder keg. Mother nature takes a lot of abuse; she has shown us a long fuse. Seven billion of us raising hell, burning fuel, making plastic thing after plastic thing.
However we have chosen to handle climate, resources, oceans, and earth, it’s so easy to recognize the beauty and delicate balance of this small limited planet. Species have managed to coexist and evolve here for millions of years in perfect balance; it’s a pretty amazing quilt of life. But we can destroy most of it in a couple hundred years, easy.
I know I’m not saying something new. Jimmy Carter tried to get some of this into our thinking back in the 1970s - to operate as a society that protects itself and its earth – and we have been blowing it off ever since. It isn’t all impossible rocket science, but I’d be naive to think that our complicated societal systems can operate without conflicts and screw-ups. We resort to a lack of common sense when we’re asked to truly measure the worth of the planet and its species, as equal, and weighed against our survival, profit, ease, joys, and fears. We always have that rocket science again to fix a bent and broken planet, but I’m thinking we have already screwed so many other species that were meant to have an equal place on the 3rd rock.
As far as the pandemic (The “Damn Panic”) is concerned, we have managed a fix, of sorts. We’ve also amplified the chaos and edges around it. It literally made me think for a while, that I should be stashing money in a mattress and figuring out where I’d go for water and food, when people started hoarding toilet paper like gold. Ingenuity doesn’t make up for loss of compassion and composure and common sense. Whatever I leave on the table as a solution, shows I am vulnerable to fear, without a gun and a place to run. I don’t know why science can work for some things, then be seen as a jaded coin flip for other things. But looking back (or into the future) if we do screw this planet, and society, and each other - to a new degree of stupid - well, we earned it. There is still all this beauty to take in despite the bad news. I hope when we’re gone, a beautiful balance can then resume.
Young people are everywhere, on every continent. Each of them at different stages and stations. Their moving forward will have the most impact on the status quo. Young people have to take over when the old ones are gone. Either way - unaware or aware of their role - they are the future. As Future Older People, now in youth, they do deserve to have some good times, right? Because we all did too, right? I know I sound old, but I knew this in my 20s and 30s, too; youth is a gift, a beautiful thing. What’s wrong with killing a little time in the sun on a houseboat. Firing potatoes from a potato gun seems like a fun idea. I did that. Turn off the news, create some distractions. Fireworks around the 4th of July. And now there are sideshows pretty much any time of year.
In 2021, July 4th weekend was the usual; it sounded like a neighborhood war, explosions and donuts, near our corner and all night at the nearby park. All week, all month. Scaring the crap out of the pets. That noise is but a long shadow of the celebration we had as a young country for that first US war we won.
Donuts and sideshows are comparatively harmless. I did it in a '69 Pontiac, and had my stash of firecrackers, occasional M-80s. That way of thinking, innocent and sometimes rowdy, is now met with nostalgia when I’m looking backwards. Some of the stuff we did was dangerous as hell. Today’s standard of dangerous probably has an even higher bar. That makes me worry about the youth. But welcome to the rite of passage. Blowing off steam, figuring things out. What can you do?
Summer 2022 is coming. The wildfires have been raging in the West the last several years. I now plan to leave the SF Bay when the smoke starts filling up the sky. I imagine I will just head east for shows and gigs, or to do some travel for fun and avoid the smoke. For all its destruction, the fires were not the main news of 2020 (not by a long shot). Whatever solace or enlightenment I hope for in 2022, I’m still wrapping my head around 2020, and now 2021. I still, nevertheless, wake up hopeful most days.
Prey (Song Lyrics) by Michael McNevin
Out to pasture, out to lunch
Asleep by 8:45, like a one-two punch
Ya fight 15 rounds for chicken feed
The less it pays, the more you need, the more you bleed
Chorus: Live to fight another day
Outrun the things that think you’re prey
Something flew out of the pterodactyl tree
Then something else was afoot, you & me
We found a drill bit, found a wire, found a wrench, found some wind
Put some wings on a scooter and off the cliff we went
Up to the moon & back, with a jar full of Tang
And a telescope, get a better look at everything
Chorus: Live to fight another day
Outrun the things that think you’re prey
This earthly relic has my number, and we usually get along
If I smell something burnin, I know her fuse is pretty long
But am I sleeping better lately, you might ask
Well, I’m filling up a mattress full of cold hard cash
When a bug and some dam panic, brings a world to a stop
Hindsights’ 2020, from the bottom to the top
Chorus: Live to fight another day
Outrun the things that think you’re prey
Outrun the things that think you’re prey
We have our moments, in the sun
With our jet skis and houseboats and a potato gun
Fireworks & sideshows, blowing up the block
Hard to say what’s bent and broken, on our floatin’ flyin’ rock
Chorus: Live to fight another day
Outrun the things that think you’re prey
Outrun the things that think you’re prey
We stacked this lousy lottery, for the lucky, for the few
Better off in Baja, skip Brazil, skip Peru
I don’t play the poor man’s bingo, and I don’t expect to go
At a Wendys, in a war, or in a meteor show
I’m just on a burger run, and now I’m late
For my daughter’s birthday, she’s turning 8
It’s my daughter’s birthday, tomorrow she turns 8
Words and Music by Michael McNevin.
© 2021 Michael McNevin. All Rights Reserved.
Mudpuddle Music (ASCAP). P.O. Box 2235 Fremont CA 94536.
info@michaelmcnevin.com (510) 789-9714.
Recording Credits:
Michael McNevin - Vocals and Electric Guitar
Michael Romanowski - Drums, Bass, Hammond Organ.
Produced & Recorded by Michael Romonowski at Coast Mastering, Berkeley CA.
Words and Music © Michael McNevin, All Rights Reserved
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Bandcamp digital track: Prey | Michael McNevin
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Michael McNevin writes songs that read like short stories. Seasoned vocals, accomplished guitar work, and vivid lyrics paint pictures of the characters and places of his travels, and of his roots in the train town of Niles, California, in the SF East Bay hills. He’s shared concert bills with Johnny Cash and The Carter Family, Shawn Colvin, Donovan, Richie Havens, and he’s been a main stager at some of the bigger music festivals around including Strawberry, High Sierra, Kerrville, Philly Folk, and SummerFolk, and he’s played thousands of solo shows throughout the US and parts of Europe. He is a winner of the Kerrville New-Folk award in Texas, 8-Time West Coast Songwriter “Song Of The Year” award, and chosen “Top 12 DIY Artist Of The Year” by The Performing Songwriter magazine. He's also placed 3rd at the Troubador Competitions at both Telluride and Rocky Mountain Folks Fests in Colorado. Michael also owns and operates The Mudpuddle Shop, a creative hive on Niles Blvd, now in it’s 15th year. From songwriter concerts and workshops, jams and gatherings, the ‘puddle’ has hosted hundreds of concerts and cattle calls for touring artists and local musicians. His original Etch A Sketch drawings hang on the walls, waiting for an earthquake.
http://www.michaelmcnevin.com/