Wisconsin in song: an updated view

The evolving history of songs that mention our state, or just feel like it.

Over the past few years, an interesting trend has emerged in the lyrics of some of Madison’s younger songwriters. Maybe it was influenced by the isolation required by the pandemic. Maybe it was a shared return to roots. But for whatever reason, a lot of songwriters in the city have upped their hyper-local references to a significant degree. From Graham Hunt‘s “Atwood” (as well as “Seein’ The World,” “Weedleafbitcoinflag,” and various others) to Ryan Liams‘ “Mound St.” to Loveblaster‘s “Wings Over Madison,” there has been a consistent outpouring of lyrical affection for our shared home.

Not that a songwriter referencing their hometown is a new tactic, but for it to happen at this volume feels novel. It got me thinking, and digging, to unearth mentions of Madison—or Wisconsin at large—in lyrics, from throughout history. When starting this exercise, the first example to come to mind was Okkervil River’s elegiac indie-folk ballad “A Girl In Port.” The lines “And before Holly made her way / Over the sea and far away / She’s telling me, inside her car / Driving us back from the Crystal Corner Bar” caused a Barrymore audience to erupt into wild applause at a show in 2008. That memory has stuck with me for a number of reasons and it sparked an increased desire to examine the frequently invisible and endlessly complex relationship people have with the place they live.

While it’s not Madison-specific, perhaps the gold standard for a demonstration of this exact dynamic is The Weakerthans’ “One Great City!“—a song that explicitly focuses on vignettes of everyday life in Winnipeg, framing them through the narrator’s love-hate relationship with the city. Like many Weakerthans songs, it’s an acute, heartstring-pulling run of grounded sentiment and genuine relatability. And it’s the model that many of the songs heightening Madison landmarks are adhering to, whether intentional or not.

The Modern Machines’ “Treadmill Waltz”—a beautiful campfire-folk closer to the Milwaukee punk band’s great 2006 album Take It, Somebody!—is the first time I remember clocking a Madison reference: “Maybe he can save enough / To buy a home and own the land he’s living on / Taxes due upon the land / in Madison” sings guitarist/vocalist Nato Coles in his signature whiskey-battered rasp. I would have been around 16 at the time I first heard the song but I can distinctly recall it pricking a sense of soft pride for being from Wisconsin. “Treadmill Waltz” became the first song to make me consider how being a state resident informed my identity.

A different kind of interest was provoked when people who weren’t from Wisconsin referenced the state in earnest. Among them: the NY-based Jeff Rosenstock—who will headline The Majestic on April 10—who opens “Nausea” with the following line: “Held up a bong hit / sitting in a hot tub / in south Wisconsin.” Ratboys—a Chicago band—added their name to this list last year, by way of the epic indie-rocker “Black Earth, WI,” an eight-and-a-half minute track that pays twisted homage to the village a short ways west of Madison. Perhaps the most memorable and cutting of these outer-state mentions happens in the blackly comedic kiss-off chorus of “Kenosha,” from the Philadelphia indie-punk band Swearin’, in which the line “I hope you like Kenosha so much you stay there” becomes a venomous sledgehammer. (In a mildly coincidental twist, Swearin’ co-frontperson Allison Crutchfield would marry Wisconsin native Mike Krol in 2020.)

A 2013 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel piece dedicated to these lyrical mentions consisted of three songs with titles referencing MIlwaukee, Smoking Popes’ “Welcome To Janesville,” and one track that mentions Madison in its lyrics (Kimya Dawson’s “Tire Swing,” which would go on to be included in the Juno soundtrack). The piece is emblematic of the coverage of city and state lyrical mentions, in that when they appear, the author(s) delight in them but declines to interrogate any greater meaning or importance. They are simply celebrations. (They have also, by and large, been Milwaukee–specific.) And while there’s nothing wrong with that approach, it’s one that largely ignores the connection at the heart of those mentions.

Wisconsin produces a notable number of acts who celebrate their home state with an emphatically pronounced sense of humor. From C.W.A. to Eddy J. Lemberg to Bananas At Large to The Gomers to Lou and Peter Berryman, there has been so much music from the past several decades alone that exists solely to be an earnest celebration of the state and all of its various identity markers and eccentricities. It’s music that is so clearly driven by pure love for the land and its people that the comedy often circles back around to an endearing, unavoidable sincerity.

In an interesting display of duality, a number of songs that pull inspiration directly from Wisconsin’s history are linked to the state’s unfortunate legacy of serial killers. While there have undoubtedly been bands from Wisconsin to tackle the topic, it’s interesting to note how many come from outside the state. It’s possible having a certain distance from Wisconsin allows those bands to view the state through a darkly warped lens, heightening a sense of nightmarishness. It’s an intriguing counterbalance to the state-bred, levity-focused comedy fare and demonstrates a dynamic depth that’s worthy of some reflection. Wisconsin at large can be a lark, but it can also be horrifying. And that’s true of every city the state houses. Madison is no exception.

A healthy portion of the songs that reference Madison explicitly focus on or reference the University or state Capitol politics. The latter was true of a number of protest songs from Madison-based acts Tone Madison publisher Scott Gordon rounded up for a 2012 Isthmus piece, which briefly highlighted Scott Walker’s disastrous governorship (a nightmare in its own right). The emphasis on the University of Madison is best evidenced by way of a 2009 OnWisconsin piece entitled “When You Say Wisconsin In Song,” in which NPR’s Stephen Thompson—a UW alum and fixture of Wisconsin arts journalism for years—answered the question “What five songs say UW-Madison?”

What stands out about Thompson’s answers is that—outside of a few predictably sports-connected picks—he took a more abstract approach and centered a few decisions on feeling. An approach that favors implicit connection over explicit mention when it comes to assessing songs that represent the state can also be found in Maureen McCollum’s round-up of music journalists answering the question “What Is THE Wisconsin Song?” in a 2019 piece for Wisconsin Public Radio. By favoring the implicit over the explicit, that question invites an endless amount of possible answers that will be unique to the listener’s experience, which may invite more contemplation about an individual’s relationship to their state, as well as the inverse.

Over the years, I have thought about what song feels the most like Wisconsin to me and have held firm in my conviction that it’s defunct Milwaukee cow-punk band The Goodnight Loving’s “Dead Fish On The Banks.” It’s difficult to fully define, but the song taps into something profound for me and unlocks memories of stone-skipping in Sturgeon Bay, riding bikes to local parks in Stevens Point, childhood visits to Horicon Marsh, the local arts communities I’ve connected with and done my best to uphold, and an inordinate amount of time spent looking out of the window of a vehicle to travel to and from shows across the state (as both musician and audience member). There’s a life-spanning nostalgia embedded into the response “Dead Fish On The Banks” draws from me—a near-lifelong Wisconsin resident—that is intrinsically connected to the state, its scenery, and the seasonal peaks that have gone a long way in defining what Wisconsin means to me. It feels like Wisconsin. But it never mentions Wisconsin by name.

Of course, there are also plenty of songs that exist that do explicitly name Wisconsin cities and landmarks by name but do so disingenuously, often to comedic effect. Matt Farley—who goes by the moniker The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities And Towns—is the absolute master of exploiting the state-resident connection for his own personal fulfillment. Any of the value in Farley’s approach feels comparatively slight to something like Wisconsin songwriter Trapper Schoepp’s rescue of “On, Wisconsin,” an abandoned Bob Dylan song celebrating the state. In the case of Schoepp, the song feels representative of an artist’s singular recognition of their place within the state’s sprawling history. 

The relationship I’ve developed to Wisconsin has its own distinct imprint, but it’s not an uncommon one. I have a genuine love for the state as well as severe reservations about its leadership and a mindful knowledge of its various failures. I am, first and foremost, community-minded in principles that spawn from a compassion that likely wouldn’t exist to the degree it does without having been subject to the state’s wintry desolation. Micro and macro environments often shape who we are as people, and that extends to the states we inhabit. There is a magic to what Wisconsin and Wisconsinites can achieve in service to bettering both their time and that of their communities with even just a bit of effort. That, more than anything else, seems to be at the heart of the influx of Madison- and Wisconsin-specific mentions that have been appearing in the works of local songwriters, from Luke McGovern to The Spine Stealers to Penelope’s Thrill.

To honor this ongoing connection, it only felt right to create a playlist of songs that chronicle Wisconsin via explicit mention (with a degree of emphasis given to Madison, its surrounding areas, and Wisconsin-based artists). Most of the songs mentioned in this piece are included, along with Tenement’s bitter ode to one of Wisconsin’s most notorious speed traps, Bon Iver’s moving tribute to the 715 area code, and a plethora of other songs that illustrate the bonds a state can engender in its residents or instill in its visitors.

Do you have a favorite song that mentions Madison or Wisconsin that’s not included? Write to me at steven@tonemadison.com, and I’ll give it a listen and consider it for the playlist.