[Verse 1]
The rain-rotted house on the dead end of Baytree, old bitter lady
Sits caddy corner to the aftershock from the quarry
She says "America's a spoiled child that's ignorant of grief"
But then she gives out full-sized candy bars on Halloween
[Refrain]
We had to add it to the tab
To die we'd have to settle up
But we just go until we can't
Or burn it down to feel the heat
[Verse 2]
The Kletz brothers parents fight in the yard in their underwear
Bobby and Jimmy sit in the baby pool with lice in their hair
They have scoliosis from constant slumps in misery
Flat parts on their crew cuts from laying their heads on their knees
[Refrain]
We had to add it to the tab
To die we'd have to settle up
But we just go until we can't
Or burn it down to feel the heat
[Verse 3]
Georgie set fire to acres of cotton settin' off model rockets
The kid from the Jewish family got the preachers kid pregnant
They sent her off and we never heard too much more about it
The sweet talk never lasts and you learn to go on without it
[Refrain]
We had to add it to the tab
To die we'd have to settle up
But we just go until we can't
Or burn it down to feel the heat
[Verse 4]
Somebody called the cops on Mandy and her boyfriend
When they busted in they found that her house was a front for a mob thing
Pulled guns and cocaine from the drywall wrapped in newspaper
We gathered in the tall grass and watched unblinking as they cuffed 'em and hauled 'em away
[Refrain]
We had to add it to the tab
To die we'd have to settle up
But we just go until we can't
Or burn it down to feel the heat
When we give up we go
To sleep
Quarry was written by Xandy Chelmis & Karly Hartzman & Margo Schultz & MJ Lenderman & Alan Miller.
Quarry was produced by Alex Farrar.
I wrote this song when I was messing around with a writing exercise I made up. I imagined a street and described it house by house. Some of the houses have fictional characters, but others contain real people I know and their stories. We filmed this video with Chris Good in a field in Kansas City. I...
I kind of gave myself a little creative writing limitation. I was thinking the structure of the song would be describing a street. And I was envisioning this street that my nana used to live on in West Virginia, which was by a quarry. And then just going house by house in each verse and describing t...
We filmed it in Kansas City because that’s what ended up being most affordable to work with the director we were gonna work with, but it was so freaking cold that I had to wear it the entire time and I was like, “Not the red sweatshirt again.” I could have just brought another sweatshirt, but I did...
Almost everything on this album is from my actual life. I think the only things that are fictionalized are the first two verses of “Quarry”—the Klutz brothers verse, those are characters in a Lynda Barry book Cruddy that I thought fit into the world. And then the verse about the woman and the candy...