Name: Derek Paul Archambault
Bands (past and present): Currently: lyricist/singer for defeater. past: transistor transistor, querencia, sparrows, swarm & sing, alcoa.
Favorite Writer(s): Salinger, McCarthy, Strummer, Morrissey
Minor threat or Black Flag: Minor Threat over Black Flag
“War is hell” – William T. Sherman
Defeater – Lost Ground
(the italicized paragraphs below lyrics are the journal entries included in the lyrics sheet)
the red, white and blues
that whiskey burns goin’ down. old man pour me another round, because it’s my last night in town, and i ain’t thinkin’ of slowin’ down. no i am fixin’ to drown ’til i see the sun, or i can’t see. because i got the blues, and the blues got me. i’m gonna make my momma proud, her boy on the front lines. and just like my daddy done, i ain’t afraid to die. i ain’t no fortunate one, but i am proud of what i done. and hardships, i seen some, but i ain’t no coward, i don’t turn and run. so i stumble home and pack up my old memories. pictures of ma, my daddy’s flask she gave me. “keep it near your heart” she would always say. it’s all he left and so that’s where it will stay. and her leatherbound book of psalms and prayers, that she would always read with patience and care. a short walk to the cemetary to pay respect before i leave. 1901 to 1943. i run my fingers through her name and the effigy. the sun is up, and it’s all i see. i got the blues and they still got me. i’m gonna make my momma proud, her hopeful new recruit. and just like my daddy done, i’m gonna bleed red, white and blue.
my momma passed in april of ’43. at her funeral i remember wacthin’ the rain hit the wood of her coffin as we set it in the dirt. she had a nice place to rest, with her momma and father next to her. none seen of my daddy though, he was lost off over seas in the first world war, same time as i was born here in birmingham. my momma always told me he was a kind man, a lovin’ man. he took care of her and what she needed, fought hard for what he believed in. she told me that when he set off for war, she told him about bein’ blessed with me, and he just smiled and told her how proud and strong i would grow up to be. and here i am, just finishin’ up my basic, findin’ my way into the same path my father did. i aim to please them, have them lookin’ down on me, and me know i am doin’ them right.
the bite and sting
i’ve spent days in this trench in the snow, just my gun by my side. it’s cold and wet and you’re all alone up keepin’ watch at night. the bite and the sting that the bitter cold brings reminds you, that you’re still alive. the hope and the pride that we all hold inside seems to break when another boy dies. we ain’t seen no germans for days, we’re just tired and sore. and it feels like i’m wastin’ away, so i drink from my flask to stay warm. every bomb miles away, every fading engine cry, still makes your heart start to race, keeps you prayin’ at night. been too quiet, and too calm for somethin’ not to be wrong, so we sit as brothers in arms. so we wait, and we shake, hear the roar of the tanks and the gunfire of the on-comin’ storm. the ring in our ears, and the cold rush of fear overtakes us with the enemy in sight. i stagger, but don’t falter, i aim and pull the trigger, and we fight. but it all happens so fast, the blur of the sweat in my eyes. but with every man i kill it seems two of my friends fall to die. i’m down on my knees, feel the pain in my gut, and the snow is covered in blood. i crawl to my captain’s side, his head on my knee, says “see to it, that my grave is kept clean.” i wake up in a hospital bed. there are rows and rows and rows of dyin’ kids. and i know, my whole infantry is dead.
when i was about fifteen, my momma gave me a silver flask my daddy left her while he was away. he told her to keep a little bit in there, just in case she missed him too much, if she should need somethin’ to ease the pain. i wish i had met him, i think we would have gotten along quite nice, we both seem to have a dear friend in the drink. i spent a month or so gettin’ pissed up and thrown out of every place in town, and i figure i walked by them recruitment posters thirty or so times before they took. but when they did, after ma died, my heart wouldn’t settle for anything else. so i sobered myself up and found myself in front of a sargeant’s desk, no older than me, signin’ my life away for this country. if there was a place for me, it was with a gun in my hand. i met my captain the day we shipped out, he was from monroe county, just a few hours from me. it was nice to have someone else from alabama there with me, it reminded me of home.
a wound and scar
i stand next to an empty grave where my friends will lay. i’ll put their bodies down into their restin’ place. i got a purple heart for a wound and scar, they just sent letters home that broke their families apart. the pallbearer’s burden as heavy as my heart’s hurtin’, all the pain and guilt my head is ponderin’. why them and not me? did you ever hear that coffin sound? it means another poor boy is in the ground. have you ever heard them church bells toll? it means another poor boy is dead and gone. the preachers preach, holdin’ folded flags. mothers mourn, holdin’ folded flags. just caskets and folded flags. no hope, just folded flags. no hope.
i was back in alabama in late ’44, after a few weeks of medics fixin’ me up over seas. i only took one bullet, just a grazin’ on my side, my daddy’s flask stopped the other right in my breast pocket. but one bullet was all it took to take the lives of my friends. so i took a bus up to monroeville for the captain’s service, i new i could never repay him for all the good he did for me at war, so i went to pay my last respects. and he would have done the same for me.
I’ve always wanted to be an author, have always loved reading and taught myself at a very young age. It started with a Superman pop-up book that my parents got for me. My father had grown up reading comics in the 60’s and it quickly transferred to my childhood. As a kid I would draw and write my own comics or short stories, always involving my favourite characters from movies or other books. After my middle school years I lost touch with writing until joining my first band on guitar when I was fifteen. We worshiped Oasis, Pulp and Blur, and for the first time I was writing lyrics to songs my friend wrote. I didn’t last long in the band, I was kicked out for not wanting to cover a particular song, if I remember correctly. Either way, I was in love with the concept of songwriting.
I started my own bands in the years to come, singing and playing guitar. It was the mid-to-late-nineties, so it was mainly punk bands. Just like every other teenager imitating the older kids who gave us their old tapes/records and took us to shows. It was an exciting time for me, as it is for all of us really discovering what punk and hardcore are, not just what we hear about or see in the mainstream. I have to thank my father for first introducing me to it though. one of the first records i remember hearing is ‘London Calling’ by The Clash. It is still one of his favourite records, and definitely mine as well. He played it for me in the living room of the house I grew up in, the house he and his father had just built together from the ground up. I was five years old and have the vivid memory of him dropping the needle and me dancing as the song ‘London Calling’ progressed. He gave me one of his old Clash pins he got right after high school in ’78 when they first started to break in the states. That pin stayed on my Celtics hat for years. From there it went to my back pack where it stayed through my junior year of high school, when I lost it on an amusement park ride.
After high school I joined my friend’s hardcore band when their singer quit. They were some of my closest friends, and I wanted nothing more than to be in the band. Another close friend joined on second guitar and we played all throughout the summer and fall of 2001. Those practices, shows and recording sessions are definitely some of the fondest memories I have of making music.
When the band broke up I was determined to start playing guitar again [it had been a few years since I had played regularly], so the drummer and I kept playing together.We got our friend to play bass, tried to sound like majority rule and jr ewing, watched ‘Stand By Me’ daily, called ourselves the ray brower story and broke up after one show. Through booking shows at a d.i.y. venue my friend Tim and I ran, I met the kids in Transistor Transistor. When their second guitarist quit, I ended up joining. I did more in the two years playing in that band, then I ever thought I would. We wrote and recorded two ep’s, I toured for eighty straight days all around the country [the only day off was the night I spent in jail for shoplifting in Louisville, KY], and got to tour europe with one of my best friends Julia filling in on drums. I actually felt I had purpose in this world after declining scholarship to college to play music.
It’s amazing what a record can do to change your life forever.
Be it that the story behind ‘lost ground’ is fictitious over-all, it holds a few parts that hold truth. The first three songs off the ep in particular have themes directly influenced by my life and the lives of my friends and family. I knew where I wanted the story to go from beginning to end, and the rest of the band and I discussed ideas for the layout of the tracks and story line.
The lyrics for ‘lost ground’ were written in a week from unfinished demos of some songs, and unmixed guitar and drum tracks of others. Living an hour away from the rest of the band and never practicing has it’s ups and downs. Sleepless nights and a few packs of American Spirits later, the record was done.
‘the red, white and blues’ – It is well known that I have a love for the drink, that drink being bourbon. And drink it, I do. that said, I began to incorporate my own life into the story with the first song I wrote for the ep. Old Crow / no ice, in the middle of the night just a few hours before dawn. The rest of the story is influenced by my grandfather enlisting in WWII, although his story of being shipped to basic is nothing like the one in the story. Just a fictional depiction of what I imagined it would be like given the circumstances I came up with. My grandfather, Paul Archambault, dropped out of high school in Manchester, NH to help support his family in the working mill town it was. He lied about his age to get into the army a year early, and quickly excelled joining the airborne division within a year. Assigned to the 101st airborne, he was unknowingly part of one of the most respected and revered armed divisions in history. His story is more fortunate than depicted in my story. Luckily for me, my grandfather busted his knee and shin in a training jump in Britain in ‘43. During the time he recuperated, he missed the jump into D-Day and what would lead to the Battle of Bastogne…
…Which the second song, ‘the bite and sting‘ pulls reference from, but is an entirely fictional take on the facts of the Battle of The Buldge…
I’ve never been to war, I’ve never held a gun, and the closest i’ve come to death was a car accident that put me in the hospital for two weeks. I’ve had it very easy in comparison. I can’t imagine what it was like for my grandfather, my friends or any other soldier to sign up for the Armed Forces knowing full well they might not make it home. what I wrote for this song is just me trying to imagine what it would have been like in Belgium in the freezing cold, tired, hungry and numb, waiting for any signal to shoot. I wanted the protagonist to fight for everything he believed in, his father before him, and his mother in the grave. I tried to depict something that modern soldiers could relate to even though it’s written about a past war. One of the ending lines, “make sure that my grave is kept clean”, is pulled directly from a Blind Lemon Jefferson song. I learned of the delta blues through Bob Dylan and other artists that pulled direct influence from the era or covered it’s songs. At the very end of the song, I wanted to show the number of casualties, injuries and shear devastation that any war brings. Waking up not knowing how you made it out of a battlefield alive, and the feelings of guilt and loss it must give a man or woman that has sacrificed it all. These are the themes that make up the next song, ‘a wound and scar’.
I have a few friends over seas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and though I may not agree with or understand their reasons for joining up, I only wish for their safe return home. The protagonist in the ’lost ground’ story is the only surviving member of his infantry, and comes home to Alabama after his rehabilitation to bury his captain. From the start of the song, the picture painted is one of hopelessness, loss, guilt, and regret. We’ve all buried friends and family before their time and put others in the ground that have had long and fulfilled lives, but personally I’ve never lost anyone to war. I tired to keep the mood fluid and short, and quickly sum up a soldier’s funeral procession in just a few lines. “no hope, just folded flags.”
All songs are off the album Lost Ground out on Bridge 9 Records.
http://www.myspace.com/defeater
One Response to “Defeater- Lost Ground”