Cutting your teeth as a songwriter three hours north of New York City means you are living in a shadow. Eventually, we all headed to the Big Apple to "make it big".

I had gotten comfortable with the freedom and independence I found in The City. I would drive from Albany to Poughkeepsie, ditch the car, hop a train to Grand Central, and then hoof it for blocks at a time. If I was in more of a hurry, I took the subway, but it always made me a bit claustrophobic.

One late night after playing a show, I was on the subway platform waiting for a train back to Grand Central. The platform was basically empty. The train approached and I realized it was on the other side of the track, so I panicked and ran the staircase to get to the other side. I raced down the stairs and slipped through the doors onto the train just as they closed and the train began to pull away. The crowd goes wild!

It seemed odd that the car was completely empty. I peered through the door into the car ahead of me, and realized that it was vacant as well. Breathing quicker, I spun around and saw that there was no one behind me either. The train was abandoned. It was a ggg-ghost train.

I tried to breathe and figure out how to get off the train. I don't remember seeing an emergency stop pull or even thinking to look for one. I don't remember how long the train ran empty. What I do remember was absolute terror. I was completely alone. I may have tried to get to move forward to get to the conductor, but there was no way to change cars.

When the subway isn't at a stop, the tunnels are quite dark. The train passed through a series of dark turns. Eventually, during one of these turns, the train began to slow and then ground to a halt. Inside a dark turn. This wasn't a stop. This train was parking.

Lucky for me, the conductor moved his way to the back through the train. Probably a smart procedure to make sure there are no stowaways. In this case, there were no stowaways. Just an idiot. He asked me what I was doing there, but my relief of seeing another person and not being buried alive crowded out my pride and I fessed to being a fool and thanked him for showing me the way out. I wish I remembered what the way out was like, but perhaps my euphoria erased my memory.

This song was written about that. It later grew into a mantra for dealing with anxiety attacks. I was listening to a lot of Dave Matthews at the time, hence the percussiveness. I was also quite into Radiohead rarities and a lot of the chord structure and the dominant seven chord probably came from a deep cut called "Banana Co." Check it out. Gnarly guitar work.