"In the low light of the hut the old man sat quietly puffing on his mapacho. “You must disengage from your... continuity,” he said, referring I’m sure to my earbuds, which, with apologies, I cranked. As I tapped the last drop out of the clay cup and laid back on the ragged foam mat I saw that the old man’s face was no longer his, but a hawk’s. The spirit-world comes on like that.
The music I came to see with my third eye, Ponderosa’s Pool Party, started with a voice, a silver high- lonesome in a mist (or maybe the mist was the voice), an electric guitar that identified itself (verbally, and I’m translating here) as He-who-makes-things-sprout, then a convergence at something analogous to a rain dance, as if conducted (in lapis lazuli) by Keith Moon. Pianos and guitars and harmonies breathed into existence tetrahedrons, Spanish friars, bird-lions, machine elves, Quetzacotl, so forth, and landscapes, always the sweeping, rolling variety. No point going on about what the music looks like. To paraphrase the giant, blazing eye that cries honey, you must see for yourself.
Hearing Ponderosa’s previous album for the first time was a no less illuminating experience if a very different one, involving a trampoline, two bottles of rye, and a sack of possum. Another facet of Ponderosa, another method to ascertain its nature. That album, Moonlight R evival, belongs in the Southern rock canon as much as anything by the Crowes or Little Feat, but more crucial is that with it Ponderosa delivered the first successful fusion of straight Southern rock and Revolver-era Beatles, utterly seamless and genetically sound, not a Frankenstein. This is the musical equivalent of mapping the genome, drunk, using only a monocle. Impossible, yet Ponderosa demonstrated that “a thing that cannot be done can be accomplished by not-doing it.” And because that sounded more conclusively relevant when it was told to me by a stag with no mouth, let’s add that Ponderosa’s clear m.o. is following its bliss.
Which is how Pool Party came to be, as Kalen Nash says without hesitation, “mainstream pop.” Not the logical follow-up album, it’s the organic one. The sound is still easily classifiable: rock:: lush, steady, propellent; the ten songs on Pool Party are no less distinguished and hooky than the shit-kickers and whiskey ballads on Moonlight R evival. Pool Party gives the impression of a completed sonic thought, and there is in fact a narrative in there, a dream-fable, more appropriately. If none of that suggests a tone, think magic hour in the Smokies, or the low Sonoran, or in the hills outside Tenochtitlan, where the feathered jaguar with the tusks hangs out."
-Mike Ruffino
Heather
Ponderosa Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I can recollect a summer set in those northwestern pines
She appeared to me essentially how we both settled down
How it makes her cry but I'm alive when the whiskey's around
Oh heather, sweet heather
Oh how I'll never be quite the same
If you could forget that I'm a wreck when I'm out on that line
Oh heather, sweet heather
Oh how I'll never be quite the same
In the song "Heather," Ponderosa reminisces about a summer in the northwestern pines when he was young and first encountered a girl named Heather. He describes how she blew his mind and that she appears to him as a symbol of settling down. Ponderosa confesses that he has struggled with alcohol and that it makes Heather cry, but when he’s around whiskey, it makes him feel alive.
While the lyrics do not elaborate much on the relationship between Ponderosa and Heather, the melancholic tone and repetition of "Oh Heather, sweet Heather. Oh how I'll never be quite the same," alluded that Ponderosa's relationship with Heather was something memorable, but he cannot seem to forget the relationship and how it has changed him. The lyrics suggest that Heather represents a turning point in Ponderosa's life, and although that particular summer may have passed, the memory of Heather and their time together lingers on.
Line by Line Meaning
I recall a time when I was young and those girls blew my mind
I remember being young and enamored by girls.
I can recollect a summer set in those northwestern pines
I can remember a summer spent amidst Northwestern pine trees.
She appeared to me essentially how we both settled down
She seemed like someone I could eventually settle down with.
How it makes her cry but I'm alive when the whiskey's around
It hurts her, but I find solace in alcohol.
Oh heather, sweet heather
A reference to 'Heather', the girl in the song.
Oh how I'll never be quite the same
My experiences with Heather have changed me forever.
How I never eat I never see the sun drift out of sight
I am so consumed by this experience that I forget basic self care and appreciation of nature.
If you could forget that I'm a wreck when I'm out on that line
If you could ignore how damaged I am when I'm doing what I love (fishing).
Writer(s): Jonathan Thomas Hall, Kalen Nash Copyright: Songs Of Nwimp, BMG Rights Management (Ireland) Ltd.
Contributed by Austin A. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
buzzkillerrr
The best version of this song! Still coming back to hear it all these years later.
astrid vvv
Me too
Chase Reneau
This version is SOOOO much better than the album version. Covering up that awesome voice with all those effects is a damn shame.
Steevi Fly
I was listening 6 years ago when I was 15/16 years old... still listening today at 22. Amazing. One of my favorite songs.
rawencrow
sure steevi fly, lets meet and go for dinner
Sylvia Cremonese
Sameee, I’m 25 now
pottery27
I saw this band last night and was asked to introduce them. They never fail to play a stellar set. Incredible melodic sense, and song writng.
daddysplace1
Why cant the radio be more like this! Thank you music fog!
Patrick Braz Barbosa
Im proud of hear this band... they makes new music seem old, and old music seem new.... Amazing!
Patrick Braz
8 years later i'm still in loving this music