The song that turned heads at our earliest shows, got us signed to Warner, took the band all over the world and led to the writing of our forthcoming Southern Gothic Musical.
Perhaps the most mysterious song of our career — Bottom of the River.
On September 4th, 2009 at 3:31am Eric woke from a dark dream. He doesn’t recall any details from the dream but that it haunted and threatening. He stumbled in the dark to his book shelf where his LG flip phone was charging and recorded this audio clip. A rare artifact from this nightmare.
“Love my hills ooh baby it’s a long way down to the bottom of the river
“Love my hills ooh baby it’s a long way down to the bottom of the river...””
But that wasn’t the only recording from that night.
Almost an hour later at 4:16am Eric recorded another haunted clip from that fated dream, and this one has never before been heard…
The recordings feel connected — even sharing the same key and tempo. Eric recalls that this was the music playing in the background of the dream, almost like someone or some group in the distance was chanting it. But like so many dreams, he completely forget this when he woke up.
In fact, it was weeks before Eric revisited these recordings on his phone. But eventually he did find them and was reminded of the dream in which he heard the chorus. He shared the melody and lyrics with Ian, who had an immediate reaction and vision for what this song could become: Ian imagined something ancient and dark. He heard a verse melody and the words started to flow. They changed the chorus to say “hold my hand…” and what followed was a biblical story of baptism and exorcism. A mother desperate to save her son. A terrifying scene where fate is left in the hands of God or something else…
Inspired, the brothers kept writing and finally finished the verses for the song late one night in the dilapidated shed of the Durham house they shared with bandmates, Brittany and Liz, who were asleep upstairs.
Brittany heard Ian and Eric singing the song around the house in the following days and had an immediate gravitation to sing the lead. When they moved it to her key it was undeniably meant for her to sing.
The band had been listening to a lot of Ray LaMontagne during these days and when they brought the song to the band Eric heard backing vocals similar to those used in one of Ray’s earliest songs Down to the River, in which the backing vocalists enter on the initial phrase and then depart in a supportive harmony only to rejoin on the lyrics later. But Eric also heard this with an additional stomp, clap and shhh in the chorus. The band didn’t yet have the rhythm section of Mike and Grant so they created an a cappella version of the song. One of the first ever performances was a sold out Sleeping Lady in Fairfax, CA in the fall of 2010.
From the beginning, the song was unlike any other in our set and would consistently get a big response. It cast a spell, but it always felt like it ended too soon. When Mike and Grant joined the band they expanded the instrumentation. Mike had attended a Buddy Miller concert where drummer, Marco Giovino, played chains on a drumstick. Mike was inspired by the sound and decided to try it with Bottom of the River, but had a stroke of brilliance when he swapped a trashcan for the floor tom because it was higher off the ground and would be more theatrical looking. Originally both Mike and Grant would flank the singers on either side of the stage dragging chains on two upside down trash cans with pieces of velvet fabric draped over each. But at one show Mike forgot the fabric, so he tried playing the chains directly on the metal trashcan and the sound was so unique that they never went back.
The song continued to be such a cult hit that the band decided to record it as their first single with Alex Wong, who helped them pioneer and extended ending that sounds surprisingly similar to the second recorded from Eric’s dream.
With the song professionally recorded the band immediately started making a music video with Director and college friend, Law. Ian once again had the breakthrough vision when he suggested that perhaps the song was trying to reveal a deeper story of witchcraft. As soon as Ian suggested it, the vision took hold of the creative team and led to the band’s most successful music video to date.
The music video and recording got the band immediate attention from new fans and the music industry. They became VH1s “You Oughta Know” Artists in 2010 and the song played in syndication for months on the network. The band continued to evolve the song live, performing it on TV shows, Music Festivals, Radio Events and of course their headlining tours. Here’s a live performance from TLA in Philadelphia during the After It All tour in 2015.
But the song’s mystery lives on…
In 2019 Delta Rae announced that they were writing a Southern Gothic Musical based on Bottom of the River. The musical plunges the audience into the jury of a Puritan witch trial and allows them to experience firsthand the hysteria, magic, passion, and fear of a mysterious and tragic chapter in American history. Watch what happens when mob justice snares an all-powerful witch, and finally learn the fate the child at the heart of the nightmare.
The musical is called The Ninth Woman and it is coming soon…