Hey little doe
If you cross the road there
Careful you go
It’s a crazy human flow
The name of this pond
Meaning “place of many waters”
Take a picture
I’ll be here until I’m not
Someday neighbors
Will drink our vanished land
Someday we may understand
Show me words
In your language of yearning
Rearrange them in the
Shape of falling snow
Don’t be afraid
If your faith shows up too late
Whither we go
It’s a long road there, for all we know
Someday muses may lead us by the hand
Through the valley of dances
And knowing glances
Life aglow
Remember the day
We wrote letters on paper
Now we upload
To the ether so it seems
I don’t know why
Love means everything to me
Will you spy on my Insta feed
And hate me for what you see
Or what you need
Lesser evils and greater goods perceived
The solidarity tapestry that we weave
Until I’m back in your good graces
Someday seen
Words, Music, and Video by Trace Meek
Camera Operator: Rebecca Meek (except for tripod shots)
Copyright © Trace Meek 2025
ISRC: QZWFS2582908
The back story
My newest song—Someday Café—presents as a summery pop song, but there’s quite a bit of experimentation going on beneath the surface.
My lyrical approach resembles a collage—taking the form of enigmatic, stream-of-consciousness vignettes rooted in emotional response, rather than prose narratives requiring literal interpretation. Generally I’m addressing topics of place; sentimentality; pining for the days of yore; old-fashioned-ness; naturalism in an age of consumerism; the specter of tribalism, othering, and trolling in an age of the internet and social media; and against all odds, hope for mass reckoning and reconciliation. Strange thematic bedfellows, for sure. But these are the ideas that influence much of my work these days.
The meanings of words are only part of the story. In an artistic or poetic work, words are allowed to act as more than just their canonical meanings—they can also function as pure sounds or even pure visual shapes. Human mouth as musical instrument. Word painting as literary fetish or oracle. I’ve crafted my phrasings in such a way as to propel the song rhythmically, sometimes at the expense of what might have been considered better word choices, had the conveyance of literal meaning been my main objective.
Next, I use a new-to-me guitar tuning that I am absolutely in love with—D F# A E A C#. This provides the same twinkly voicing as the F A C G C E tuning commonly associated with the Midwest Emo genre, but I’ve tuned it down a few steps and played it on my sparkly purple baritone electric guitar, to bring the melody within my relatively lower vocal range. By combining this unique chordal voicing and my sentimental lyrical approach, I’d like to think that I’m pioneering a new musical genre: Northeast Emo. For me, this resonates better than indie pop, alternative, rock, or many of the other established genres that appear in the drop-down menus at the publishing services.
Lastly, I continue to study and practice music production techniques. I realize that I still have a long way to go, to achieve the level of quality that I hear in my head—and on professionally-recorded songs. But I’m enjoying rising to the challenge, learning everything I can, and hopefully getting better with every iteration, despite the slow decline of my hearing in the higher frequency ranges.
The audio version of the song is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes / Apple Music, and other music streaming platforms. And of course, you may play the music video, which is embedded at the top of this essay.
Incidentally, I created and played the humorous “drummer” and “bass player” personas that appear in the video. The full band “composite” that appears a couple of times was NOT created by artificial intelligence. It was made with good old-fashioned human intelligence, and the clever filmmaking techniques of layering and masking. Watch until the very end and my production secret will be revealed.
Thank you for listening, and for taking the time to read this. I hope you have a wonderful day.
Warmly,
Trace