Music Review // Ryan Wayne "Forty Paces to the Bottom"

Ryan Wayne takes us to the dark side of the harvest moon as the song "Forty Paces to the Bottom" combines that out-of-this-world guitar based rock sound of Pink Floyd with the storytelling and down-to-earth Americana vibes of Neil Young.   The song holds a steady drawl which makes it feel more like a western, but it just feels more serious in that way as well.

While I like the music side of this one I spent some time wondering what exactly was meant by "Forty Paces to the Bottom".   There is a great repeating line in here which says: "Might break even but even's not a lot" and I think about that a lot because sometimes in life you feel like you're not losing but you're not getting ahead either.  There's something to be said for staying stagnant.

Everyone is different but I've always just felt like I wanted to always be moving forward as well as growing and learning.  This song helps me to remember that, to take steps out of my comfort zone so I can do so.   But I think about people say you can take two steps forward and three steps back and how that relates with this title.  That makes me think I start understanding the song.

But then there is this part near the end where Ryan Wayne begins singing about how it could be more than forty paces because of all the times he's almost made it there but turned around and went back.  This makes me begin to think about it being like death and the forty paces to humans is like nine lives for cats.  It makes that idea of the time we have feel more compact within the forty paces and so we better get going to not break even.