Shakedown · 2025

Landlocked

The Drytiders

The Backstory

I was somewhere flat. Ohio maybe. Indiana maybe. One of those places where the sky has too much room and the corn keeps its own counsel. I had been driving for hours and getting mean about it. I am not proud of that. I am a saltwater man. I like air with teeth in it. I like a horizon that moves around and does not apologize.

Then I saw the truck.Rusted out in a field. Tires flat. Corn up around it like the earth was trying to take it back. Stuck in the cab was an old broomstick, and flying from it was a Jolly Roger. Sun-bleached. Ragged. Still snapping like it had orders.

I pulled over and let the engine idle.That flag did not belong there. Which is exactly why it did. Some poor beautiful fool had planted the sea in the middle of the corn and walked away laughing. Or crying. Hard to say. Good things are like that.I sat there longer than I meant to.

There are men who live ten miles from the ocean and never hear it. There are men buried in corn and concrete who carry a tide inside them all their lives. Place matters. Blood matters more.I cried a little. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to clear the bilge.

The song came quick after that. Gas station receipt. Bad pen. One hand on the wheel before the ink was dry.I do not know who owned that truck. I do not know who raised that flag.But whoever he was, he left me a compass.

- Echo Thatch, 2024, somewhere between Toledo and nowhere

Lyrics

[Verse 1]

Used to chase the stars through a salt-kissed sky
Now I chase a mower through the mid-July
Built a barn where the tides won't reach
But my soul still listens to the ocean's speech

Learned to read the clouds like the old men do
Still tie sailor's knots in my Sunday shoes
When the wind blows through the amber grain
I swear I hear that mermaid refrain

[Pre-Chorus]

And the locals laugh when I check the tide
But there's a compass in me that I just can't hide

[Chorus]

YO HO TO THE WIND I GO!
Though the sea's just a dream
in this landlocked home.
My anchor's dropped off an old dirt road
I'm still a sailor, beating to weather wherever I roam.

YO HO TO THE WIND I GO!
The sea's deep In me
in this landlocked home.
A pickup truck and a pirate flag flown
I'm still a sailor, beating to weather wherever I roam.

[Verse 2]

I saw her between Melville and Twain,
In a dusty town with no trace of rain.
She smiled at my hands, all weathered and bold,
Said, "Like the Coleridge Mariner, a story untold."

She played Tin Cup on a worn CD,
A landlocked love in that library.
We traced out dreams we might never sail,
But in her eyes, I found my Holy Grail.

[Pre-Chorus]

And the locals laugh when I check the tide
But there's a compass in me that I just can't hide

[Chorus]

[Bridge]

Someday I'll stand where the breakers roar,
With the salt on my skin and the wide open shore.
But 'til that tide turns, I'll carry the sea,
In a landlocked life where it still calls to me.

[Pre-Chorus]

And the locals laugh when I check the tide
But there's a compass in me that I just can't hide

[Final Chorus]

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