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Mrs. Moo

from Burnout by Ethan Woods

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about

I first wrote this song as a part of a scrapped project about oldies music, with a particular focus on Roy Orbison. While it's come a long way from those beginnings, I like to think it still has some of that songwriting style baked into its DNA. To me, it’s a song about growing up; the persistent feeling of being an imposter that whispers in your ear throughout the formalities of adult life—the self as two children in a trench coat pretending to be an adult. The lyrics obliquely reference events in my life, from jobs I’ve worked (barista, gardener) to places I’ve lived (New England). The title is a shout-out to my dad, who used to perform a character named Mrs. Moo for me and my sister when we were children. Whenever we were bad, she would bonk us on the head with her hoof.

I recorded the fundamental guitar and voice track in a single take on a wooden platform outside of my friend Trevor Wilson’s house in western North Carolina. We recorded the whole album this way on a single late summer day. Burnout is sequenced in the order that we recorded each song on that day, with the first half of the album representing the morning, and the second half representing the evening. As such, “Mrs. Moo” was the first song we recorded, at approximately 9AM if memory serves. The pastoral Appalachian landscape was just beginning to come to life with insects and birds. I remember I was nervous, and had a hard time keeping in the groove with the tape player recording of my friend Matt Evans playing drums. In the take that we ended up using, you can hear me rush the line “Sentimental for New England now,” ever so slightly missing the mark of Matt’s re-entry. To me, that moment is the whole song.

lyrics

I think that I'm a little child inside
Dissatisfied with my baggy disguise
Afraid of married fingers pointing
So I lie

Ignore the call
From the end of the hall
A beckon from the ender's line
A shoe that won't untie

Does she see what a fake I am?
I'll make her drink and I'll call her a man
A passing note, I tried to gloat
Oh what a sham

At the end of the day
Try to loosen my ways
Call a song to a passerby
Try not to wonder why

The message that fell short
A hologram or a lovely sport
Does the meaning follow the
Gardener's try or the pie in the sky or the kisser's eye
Or should I wake up?

And I know that I'm too shy
Always laid down, spinning my
Anxious thread off lumpy spools
Is it right to amplify the question why
Or should I wake up?

Sentimental for New England now
The rolling hills and the grazing cows
But outside answers rest too gently
Why do I try?
Cause wings with muscle grow from trouble
Why do I try?
I think the answers in the question
Why do I try?
And when I'm lowest, I will push on through
But why?

credits

from Burnout, track released February 15, 2022

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Ethan Woods Brooklyn, New York

Musician, composer, & producer based in Brooklyn, NY.

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