Lions in the Lair (2022)

Genre: Folk ballad

This song is a ballad in the traditional sense: it tells the story of a significant (but unsung) event in history, in this case the first train robbery by the notorious James gang.

How I came to write the song is a story in itself…

When I moved to Colorado in 1978, my parents were still living in Michigan, so I made countless road trips back to visit them. It’s a two-day (19-hour) journey by car and we would often take a break midway. Over the years, we stayed in almost every hotel off I-80 in both Nebraska and Iowa. Several times we ended up in Adair, Iowa.

To the eyes of a passing stranger there didn’t seem to be much there: a gas station with a convenience store, one roadside hotel and (like many rural American cities), a main street with shops mostly boarded up. But Adair had one claim to fame that continued to fascinate me. Right outside of town, along a bend in Turkey Creek, was a plaque memorializing the first train robbery ever committed by the notorious Jesse James and his gang in the summer of 1873.

My first impression was, “What the heck??!!” Indoctrinated by all the “cowboy and Indian” Westerns of my youth, I associated these outlaws more with the “Wild West.” In my imagination that was somewhere further on—the Dakotas, Nevada, a Hollywood set (?) What were they doing in the middle of Iowa?

The hotel in Adair had free copies of the local paper, which reproduced newsletter articles from the time. The eyewitness accounts of the train robbery became the primary source material for my lyrics and I’ve tried to remain as true to the story as it was reported at the time. (It’s not every day you get to use the word “haymow” in a song.)

I have, however, done some editorializing as well.

The American outlaw mystique has been carefully nurtured, often with careless disregard to actual history. We’ve often made the ruffians the heroes of our folk tales and songs, glorifying the “outlaw” in general and the James gang in specific. The image of mavericks, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor and the “cowards” who gunned them down is all part of American lore. But, like much history, it’s not quite that simple.

The unsuspecting “gentlemen” that showed up in Adair, Iowa that hot July day in 1873, killed a man, terrorized the passengers and caused a lot of damage. And they were only getting started. The gang would go on to an even more deadly crime spree over the next decade.

As with much of American history, there’s also a racial element lurking in the background. A biography called Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War by T. J. Stiles greatly influenced my thinking about my trips through Adair.

Here were a few of my takeaways from Stiles’ book:

—Jesse James was from a pro-slavery family in Missouri at the outbreak of the Civil War.

—He and his buddies were young bushwhackers, schooled by the notorious William Quantrill, who was responsible for vicious atrocities committed by pro-slavery groups during some of the bloodiest pre-Civil War “skirmishes” in contested territories.

—After the defeat of the South in the Civil War, James and his friends counted themselves among the “redeemers” of the Lost Cause, aggrieved by their loss and anxious for revenge against the federal government.

—James enlisted the help of the editor of the Kansas City Times, John Newman Edwards, to help create his own “myth” as an heroic Robin Hood—a far cry from the reality of his crimes.

And back to those Hollywood Westerns…There’s an eerie resonance between the movie outlaw marauders with bandanas around their faces to disguise their identities and the even more malevolent hooded men of the Deep South, who terrorized African Americans after the Civil War.

I decided the whole “outlaw” myth needed an historical “corrective,” which is what “Lions in the Lair” attempts to do. (I am, after all, a history guy.)

Some Other Influences

My paternal ancestors were Czech immigrants, who settled in Iowa in the mid-19th century, so I’ve never thought of it as a “fly-over” state. Our family did a lot of driving through— from our home in Michigan to our grandparent’s place in Colorado.

As kids, whenever we made our approach to visit relatives in Cedar Rapids, my Dad would always begin singing the “Iowa Corn Song”—to our delight:

“We’re from Ioway, Ioway. That’s where the tall corn grows.”

I included echoes of my Dad’s pronunciation of “Ioway” in the song.

For this version I also interjected another nod to my heritage…

A little over three and a half hours northeast of Adair is Spillville, Iowa, a small Czech community where Antonín Dvořák spent his summers while he was teaching at the National Conservatory of Music in America in New York City. It’s where he wrote many of his most famous pieces including the String Quartet in F (the “American”).

Antonín Dvořák, in addition to being a gifted violist, melodist and composer, was also an avid train watcher. Many believe the first movement of his American quartet resembles the sound of a train in motion.

Since “Lions in the Lair” is a song about a train robbery, I leaned heavily on Dvořák’s methods to get that propulsive string quartet sound. Into the third and fourth verses of this version I’ve dropped a MIDI string quartet background that borrows from his technique.

As Americans, we have a hard time coming to grips with the legacy of slavery and the persistence of systemic racism in the United States. (Sorry Governor DeSantis, but it’s true.) By adopting the James gang “outlaw” persona as heroic, we need to understand the racist baggage that comes with it.

If there’s a moral to this song, I would say “Know your nation’s history and be careful what you glorify.”