Song Premiere: East Cameron Folkcore, “Ophelia”

Videos by American Songwriter

East Cameron Folkcore is a 11-piece outfit from Austin,Texas that fuses folk, blues, country, punk and classical leanings into songs that are meant to inspire both change and sing-alongs. They are possibly the only band to site both Black Flag and Gustav Mahler as an influence.

Their new album For Sale, out February 5, features “Ophelia,” a lyrically ambitious, Josh Ritter-inspired dirge.

We asked songwriter/vocalist Jesse Moore to explain the song, and he gave us a mouthful:

“Really, I was just trying to tell the girl I loved that I wasn’t going to treat her like the assholes she was used to being with. I was living in what we called “The Bankrupt House” at the time, with a friend of mine, Andy Denham, who had a library of a couple thousand books. So I was reading a lot, and found myself blending, merging, intertextualizing and rearranging ideas and characters from these books into my song lyrics. It should also be mentioned that at the time, I was a little obsessed with Josh Ritter’s song “Thin Blue Flame.” The imagery he uses and the way he pulls historical moments into his characters and his world creates a really interesting way of making certain perspectives seem universal.

“So, I blended a lot of different ideas together – from people that I knew from growing up, to historical characters, to biblical characters, to fishing heroes from Montauk, to favorite movie references, to political unrest, to the downtrodden strife of man and his will to stand up to it all with integrity and grit, as well as with forgiveness and love. Must have done something right, I guess, ’cause that girl is now my wife.”

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply

Dropkick Murphys: Signed And Sealed In Blood