As per our interview with Dr. Dog singer/songwriter/bassist Toby Leaman we posted just yesterday:
PHAWKER: I love “Distant Light” — it sounds like the Greatest 70s Era Dylan Song Never Written. You sing it so I’m gonna assume you wrote it. What was the inspiration for the lyrics? In your travels, have you guys run into some mystical Merlin-type old man along the side of the road in the middle of nowhere who gave you directions to the “infinite road”?
TOBY LEAMAN: [Laughs] Those lyrics came pretty easily. Sometimes you work on a song and once you start it, it’s like “Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing.” You don’t have to figure out what the hell you’re writing about halfway through the song and then work backwards. This one was pretty simple. And you can kinda pull stuff, like the “yellow wood” thing is from Robert Frost. Then there’s the “[Mysterious] Stranger,” the story that Mark Twain wrote, where the guy hops down from a tree. [Laughs] You kinda take from what you need sometimes. But that story’s just kind of about not settling. Trying to move forward even if that’s all you’re doing. If there’s no goal in sight.
PHAWKER: So it’s not a song about scoring drugs?
TOBY LEAMAN: Aghh…Dear Lord, No! Maybe it was. MORE