Album Notes

Rainy Day Parade (2009)

The Beautiful Train Wrecks recorded Rainy Day Parade over the course of eleven months 2009 in Portland, Oregon. The album is the debut album for the band, which has been touring and playing shows for the past two years around Oregon, Washington and the Pacific Northwest.

Rainy Day Parade features 11 harmony- and melody-driven tunes that range from up-tempo traditional country rockers like “Country Boy” and “Island Darling” to more modern pop-influenced tunes like “Waiting Room” and the gritty “Eliza.”

Lyrically, Rainy Day Parade is both playful and serious, as evidenced by the fun country homage to the band’s hometown of “Portland,” while the emotional content of songs such as “Highway 101” and “Uncle Ralph” delve deep into heavier topics such as lost loves and stark solitude.

Even in the most serious of songs, however, optimism is a recurring theme in the Train Wrecks’ music. The songs are heartfelt and immediate without resorting to lyrical clichés or disingenuous themes. “Greensburg” artfully distills the band’s best qualities into a country-tinged folk rocker, retelling the story of a devastating F5 tornado that almost completely destroyed the town of Greensburg, Kansas. The short distance from Lucas Alberg’s childhood home of Pratt, Kansas, to Greensburg inspired him to write a paean to the small town, which is now rebuilding itself into a model green community. Although 95% of the town was destroyed by the tornado, the willingness of the residents to rebuild their beloved town serves as a testimonial to hope and the triumph of the human spirit. These are the type of emotional currents that The Beautiful Train Wrecks hope to communicate through their music.