Clementine Was Right Unpack Every Song on Tell Yourself You’re Going Home

I’ve known both Mike Young and Gion Davis since the pandemic. I was introduced to Young through the publisher of my first book, who was good friends with him and turned me on to the Clementine Was Right album Lightning & Regret. Davis, on the other hand, I’d known through sharing some space in the literary community together. His poetry book, too much still sits on my poetry shelf, and I hold onto it dearly. Together, Young and Davis make up the songwriting team behind Clementine Was Right, the Denver-based-but-everywhere-grown rock outfit that, if you have any smarts, should be put on your to-listen-to list right this instant.

Clementine Was Right’s latest album, Tell Yourself You’re Going Home, is their best, but it’s also a venerable collage of everything great about rock ‘n’ roll. There’s a lot of heavy Americana, some emo undertones, even a glow of indie-folk—sometimes all at once in the same song. 30 musicians are credited with performing on the album, which might seem like a lot if you aren’t familiar with Clementine Was Right’s rotating live cast—and having that kind of ensemble at their disposal helps make the band even more dimensional than Young’s shepherding, impassioned, siren vocal already does. As quickly as “Coca Cola Vigil” will make you weep over folks you’ve never met, “Takes Tall Walks” will have you standing up straight and calling your parents to tell them you love them. That’s the dynamic of Clementine Was Right, as Young and Davis—both literary poets at some time or another in their lives—have a chemistry together on the page that, then, transcends into a full-band lilt of brilliance. Few working bands can claim that kind of magic.

Today, Clementine Was Right’s Tell Yourself You’re Going Home is streaming everywhere, and I implore you to listen to it. It’s the best album that’s come out today, and it will be the soundtrack to this weekend and, for me, the next one after that. Young and Davis were kind enough to offer us a glimpse behind the scenes of all 10 tracks on the record, so tune in, kick back and let your mind wander with them to new, fantastic places.

“There Are No More Almond Trees”

This is a song that was borne out of watching my home state (California) get hit by fires, floods, etc, and I started wondering “What would I miss if it all just went away?” A pretty simple concept that grew into a story of people I remembered from childhood and “where are they now” as adults, and this idea of everyone I know in the dark somewhere whispering to the people they love “I love you, but I feel like shit.” Gion wrote the best part of the chorus. —Mike

“Attic Full of Barbie Limousines”

The premise of the song is basically everybody who “stayed behind” or “got stuck” in their small town talking to someone who “made it out” and all the many complicated feelings and dynamics at play there. Lead vocals are handled by one of our very stylish drummers, Dick Darden. It’s a left turn into Jim Ford-ish swamp pop by way of Silver Jews. The beginning and end are all sweet things people have said to me, plus the voicemail from my mom calling me at 2AM in 2021 to let me know my dad had passed. —Mike

“Coca-Cola Vigil”

This is dedicated to my friend Gene Kwak, an excellent novelist, who asked me to write a song about a story I told him from my hometown newspaper, about a gentleman named Paul who died in a workplace accident at a trash burn plant. Paul’s widow, Christine, would protest outside of the plant every day and would organize a vigil for him every year on the anniversary of his death using Facebook. At the time I told Gene about reading this story, we were young fiction writers trying to figure out the “relevance” of “contemporary technology” in fiction, and this seemed like a really poignant story about digital altars, etc.

But as the years went on, the rest of the story obviously became more important. In 2020, when there were really bad fires near my hometown, I did a thing on social media where I said I would write a song for anyone who wanted to donate some money to some of the people helping with folks displaced by the fires. Gene donated money and asked me to write a song about the “Coca Cola vigil story,” and here it is. —Mike

“Secret to Let Go”

This is another song Gion helped me fix. It started when I was in Ely, NV—which is not a town I grew up in but which struck me as very similar to rural Northern California towns—and I was eating breakfast and watching a woman across the street at a Motel 6 try the handle of every car in the parking lot. She was wearing an oversized 49ers parka and was obviously looking for something more than just a car.

She went into one of the rooms and came back out with a little kid, and together they walked away down the street. And all of this made me think of my own family, and families in general, and the way that when we enter into our families, we enter into all these secrets and troubles and promises, and suddenly it’s our job to navigate them, but they don’t belong to us (the secrets and troubles and promises), and at some point we have to let them go, and we have to give up the idea that our families are anything more special than fellow wounded, bumbling people. —Mike

“Meet Me in the Dark”

I kept re-writing the last verse of this until Gion liked it. This is about a summer love affair. One person can’t swim, one person can’t drive. People touch each other’s faces, but touch is hard to memorize. There is no way to break the past, and no one ever changes—we just pile up. —Mike