Defiance, Ohio Is the Name of a Band

Defiance, Ohio is the name of a band
And the thing is that they are from Columbus, Ohio
Which is confusing to folks on the East Coast when I tell them about the time that they played for four hours at the Newport and it was raining outside
But me and everyone I knew still locked arms after the show and walked down High Street singing "Oh! Susquehanna" at the top of our lungs til some dive bar security threatened to kick all our asses
And he had twenty pounds on all of us combined
and Defiance, Ohio plays folk punk which pretty means that sometimes
they let a banjo or a cello crawl into bed with the screaming
and all their shows feel like they were made just for you
And Jeff plays guitar for them
and makes singing look effortless
And I guess it is, kind of
because all their fans know all the words to their songs and they sing them so loud it's like the band doesn't even have to
And their fans are often cloaked in tattoos and trucker hats and ironic hand-me-down shirts from old car garages or little league baseball teams and they jump on each others backs at shows and scream in each others faces and it's like
familial, I guess
or I guess it is most times

And one time at this show
I saw a dude with straight edge tattoos knock out some dude who had an entire school of fish inked on his arm and so okay It's certainly not always familial
And when the guy with the fish tattoos hit the floor someone from the band stopped the music and said "hey listen
don't come to a Defiance, Ohio show and fight
cut that shit out
hold hands with each other or some shit"
Which is funny to say coming from a band who put the song "I Don't Want Solidarity if it Means Holding Hands With You" on their first album
which was a fine album
but it had a little too much acoustic noise for my taste

Defiance, Ohio is a real town in Ohio and the band is not from there
And anyone who is from there either leaves or dies
And in the summer of 1794
General Mad Anthony Maine ordered a fort be built at the ? of the mountains in Alglaze Rivers in Ohio and when it was done
a soldier from Kentucky named Charles Scott stood in front of the fort and said, "I defy the English and all the devils of Hell to take this"
And that's how the fort was called Fort Defiance and how a whole city spilled around it by 1904
And that city was also named Defiance
And the site of the fort is a library now or at least that's what I've been told
And me and my pals would drive up to Defiance, town every now and then when we were old enough for adventure but too young to properly wallow in the depths of Columbus' scene
And we would go to Bud's Diner and we would flirt with the waitresses
And sometimes we would drive down the backroads screaming the words of some punk dirge out of the windows of a car we had to have back in someone's parents driveway by morning

And sometimes we would take out mailboxes with a baseball bat
And one time a man ran out of a house with a Confederate flag hanging from the porch and he chased us down the road calling us outside all of our names
And my buddy Derrick said he swore he saw the man holding a shotgun and so we stuck to the fears of our own city from that point on

And the second Defiance, band album came out in 2006 and it was called The Great Depression
And it nearly started an honest revolution in my little corner of heartbreak and I barely made it through 2006 alive cause we had to bury Tyler and Marissa too
And in the song Condition 11:11 there are the lyrics
I remember in the kitchen, when you told me your grandma died
That's when I realized it gets worse
And it does
It does get worse
It is really something to remember that you can actually be alone

And so when the band sings
Here's to this year I never thought I'd make it through
I put my arms around someone else who did make it and swayed along as a clock swung itself past midnight at the end of December
And I saw Defiance, band in another sweaty room in '07
And everyone there was sad
So no one was into fighting that night
And the band with the cello and the band with the banjo strings stood thick and heavy in the air
No one seemed to mind
It's like if we all try hard enough in the same room
Everyone can remember what it is to lose somebody at the same time

And Defiance, town is awash with heroin now
And I see it on the news
A man nodding off in a car and two people overdosing in the same night
And 27 people dragged to the town jail in a drug bust
Is the kind of town that will hold you under its tongue
ready to swallow you whole
And they found the body of a kid who used to come up to Columbus for punk shows and ? in Defiance, town apartment
And his body was surrounded by spent lighters and he was at the Defiance, band show where they played Grandma Song and everyone put up their cellphone lights but the true punks put up lighters and waved them and the band sang
Do you come from a dead people?

And Defiance, town is dying off like all of Ohio's other towns that feed the bigger cities in both food and those who escape
And in the Defiance, town paper I read a story about the heroin epidemic
And the headline said: we will not let this destroy us
and above it is a picture of a mother pulling her young daughter's frail body close to her chest in front of a worn-down house
And in her eyes is a determination
And in her eyes is daring all the devils of hell to come take what is hers and I thought about what it must be like to name yourself after a town that's become a ghost factory and play songs about surviving a haunting

And Defiance, band hasn't made a record in six years and the last one sounded like they were trying to get out of each other's way
Then I heard they played some Indiana dive last spring
And I heard the pit was wicked
And later that week there was another drug bust in Defiance, town
And there are times -- I guess --destruction is not as much of a choice as we think it is and man, I barely made it out of 2006 alive
And in the Defiance, band song "Oh! Susquehanna" the chorus that everyone sings goes
And I wonder what did they do with the bodies
And I wonder what did they do with the bodies
And I wonder what did they do with the bodies
and I wonder