My dad just recently got diagnosed with cancer and this song reminds me of my dad for some reason, and it makes me feel whole. I don't really know what it is but it gives me a bit of peace in a way... beautiful song.
I remember I found Wye Oak on Baltimore Does Baltimore, if they ever release a Spotify version of Dance My Pain Away it would be on repeat every season
What a pleasant discovery. I'm curious about the name of your band. How did you decide on Wye Oak? I grew up tending the great Wye Oak with my father. He worked at Chesapeake College for my entire childhood & tending for our State Tree fell to the maintenance dept. My favorite days that daddy took us to work with him weren't the days we got to swim in the pool or play around on the tennis courts, they were the day we got to tend the Wye Oak. With me being the youngest it fell to me to be the one to actually climb inside & add the new layers of protective tar. I never minded it. Who as a little kid growing up in the 70's & 80's, regardless of the task, would not want to spend a few hours with their vivid imagination inside of a 450 year old tree? Certainly not this kid. As an adult, people think I converted to Druidism. But having a mother who is Seneca & Nanticoke, a Scotch Irish father of heavy Celtic descent & influence is it any wonder the child who grew up inside an old sacred Oak tree grew up to be Druid? Especially since my father's mother was Pagan? Not a surprise at all really. Especially when you know enough world history to know early Christian churches were ALWAYS built on or beside sacred Pagan sites. And Maryland certainly did have a heavy Druid influence & population. Druid Hill didn't get its name by accident, nor did it come from Lord Baltimore despite now being inside the city. It's where the Baltimore Zoo is actually. I thoroughly enjoyed this little walk down memory lane. It lightened my heart a bit as I sit here by all that is left of my great childhood friend reflecting on the morning we awoke to learn it came down in a thunderstorm in 2004. Not a hurricane, merely a storm. My kids & I brought my dad to see it that morning because he just had to. It was the only time I saw my daddy cry. He largely blamed himself. He tended that tree for 40 some odd years & thinks he didn't fight hard enough when they decided to anchor it with thick metal cables. It was those same cables that attracted the ⚡️ strike that brought it down...just a few years after daddy had retired.
I’ll take the liberty to answer since you shared such an interesting story and the chances they see this are slim…the band is named after the very same tree. Ty and your father for your work.👍🏼
