Song Highlight: Timeshares - Bad Hand

Earlier in the week, my brother Eric suggested that I revisit the music of Timeshares, a country-tinged punk rock band from downstate New York. I wrote about them a few years ago after seeing them open for the Menzingers, where I was thoroughly impressed to the point of thinking they outshone the headliners. After Eric's suggestion, I proceeded to listen to their 2018 EP Out There and have had it on repeat for the past several days.

Of the songs on Out There, I think my favorite is “Bad Hand”, written by guitarist/vocalist Jon Hernandez. It is perhaps the most full on rock and roll song on the EP, with awesome dueling guitar solos between Hernandez and vocalist/guitarist Max Stern towards the climax. Lyrically, the song has a nebulous sadness to it.

My interpretation is that the song is about two people frustrated with their lives in a small town where they feel like they are not going anywhere. They are afraid that they are going to die in the same place they were born.

"Where the bar’s as low as we can set it

And where we go to gather and recall

Try to forget

If we’ve got to die my only fear was doing it here"

The narrator’s friend has been down on his luck to the point of considering self harm:

"There’s a shake in your demeanor

It’s meaner than the rising sun

So you go saying things like you won’t see another one

You think home is where you hang your anger

Had the future ever failed

To take what’s done us wrong and catch the gale

Set them to sail”

The narrator feels that he could grasp towards something more meaningful out of life, but they feel trapped. His friend is the main thing that is keeping him in the town and making his existence bearable. But in the same sense, they are also what keeps them immobilized there.

“But imagine if we were sitting in the car

Just you and the weight of a small world and me

Still free to take flight rather than flicker like the lights

Outside the bowling alley OTB

When I curse all it holds I guess I’m cursing you too I suppose

My angel of mercy

There before me with her hand on the garden where all life grows

And she says stop

It’s just another tired place somewhere in America

But I have to see it

I have to live with it

I can’t forgive it

I’d like to watch it burn down”

If you have a penchant for rousing punk rock music with a hint of alternative country (bands like Uncle Tupelo), you should really check out Timeshares.

Buy Timeshares’ music here.