Richard Buckner is an American singer songwriter born in California, reside… Read Full Bio ↴Richard Buckner is an American singer songwriter born in California, resident in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for a number of years, and currently living in Brooklyn, NY. A critically-acclaimed artist most often associated with the Alternative Country movement, Buckner has in recent albums eschewed his initial acoustic approach and displayed an increasing interest in more abstract music styles.

Buckner began his career with the acoustic "Bloomed" (1994), a lyrically dense suite of songs recorded in Lubbock, Texas and heavily influenced by that state's tradition of whisky-soaked poet/troubadors, probably best embodied by Townes Van Zandt. In 1996, he released the major label "Devotion & Doubt," with members of Giant Sand backing him, displaying a more adventurous, almost avante garde approach to songwriting and arranging.

Since then, he has returned to recording for smaller labels, to continued critical acclaim and cult status. His 2000 album The Hill - his first for Chicago-based indie label Overcoat Recordings - features poems from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1915), which Buckner set to music. The album plays as a single track, nearly thirty-five minutes long. He returned in 2002, first with the "teaser" EP Impasse-ette, then a full-length entitled Impasse one month later. In early 2003, his self-released, self-titled album was reissued by Overcoat, and was his final release for the label. In 2004, an edited version of Richard Buckner's song Ariel Ramirez, from the album Since (1998) was featured in one of the television ads for Volkswagen's Touareg.

He is currently aligned with North Carolina-based indie label Merge Records, who have released four of his albums so far: 2004's Dents and Shells, 2006's Meadow, 2011's Our Blood, and 2013's Surrounded, as well as the 7-inch single Willow (b/w Lost). He also recorded an album with Jon Langford (most notably of The Mekons) called Sir Dark Invader vs. The Fanglord (2005) for Buried Treasure Records.

Ariel Ramirez
Richard Buckner Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Oh where you lay
Your head tonight
I'll roll away alone
And close on down

Take up your wings
And fly back out
And we'll pretend

Forget we're dead

Yeah, we'll lay it down
When we're all through
When we're killed or cured
And barely heard

Put Ariel on
And smoke away the night
And do the white net crawl
Until the hammers fall

I kept your poem here
With all my other gear
But in the end
I missed what it meant

Oh where you lay
Your head tonight

I'll roll away alone
And close on down

Overall Meaning

The lyrics to Richard Buckner's song Ariel Ramirez seem to be about saying goodbye. The singer is saying that they will leave the person they are speaking to, but they will leave in different ways. The singer will "roll away alone and close on down" while the other person will "take up your wings and fly back out." It seems as if they are accepting that their relationship will end and trying to make peace with it.

The second verse seems to be about forgetting about the consequences of their actions and their deaths. They will "pretend" that they are not dead and forget about it altogether. The next lines are about laying it down, waiting for what is to come, and then smoking and doing the "white net crawl." This could be a reference to drug use or just a metaphor for something else entirely. The last line is about the "hammers fall," which could be a symbol for the end of their lives.

The rest of the song is about missing the other person and the things they left behind. It seems as if the singer has kept a poem from the other person, but they still do not understand the meaning behind it. Overall, the song seems to be about accepting the end of a relationship and trying to find peace in it, even though it is painful.

Line by Line Meaning

Oh where you lay
Asking where the person sleeps at night

Your head tonight
Referring to the person's head while sleeping at night

I'll roll away alone
Leaving alone without any companionship

And close on down
Retiring or withdrawing from the world

Take up your wings
Asking the person to embrace freedom and fly away

And fly back out
Leaving the present situation and going back to the past

And we'll pretend
Imagining or assuming things that aren't true

Forget we're dead
Forgetting about mortality and the inevitability of death

Yeah, we'll lay it down
Giving up or surrendering

When we're all through
At the end of something

When we're killed or cured
At the point of either death or recovery