John's Friend Comments

This ballad is about music, and music is about people, and people love and hate each other with a passion and talent that is truly astonishing. This song is about unlikely heroes overcoming long odds and being overcome by them. It is about a new community being built upon the rubble of an older one without losing the memory of what had come before. It’s about songs we’ve heard before—some of us too many times—ending in slightly different ways. It’s about the mystical power that dances between the beats and through the notes, drawing some folks together and pushing some folks apart. It asks some old questions, setting notes in tension with each other and allowing the characters to decide how those chords will be resolved. (Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville, Introduction)