"Mine Torne Road” is a long winding road just north of the Bear Mountain Bridge that connects Rte. 9W, in Fort Montgomery, NY, to the West Point reservation on Rte. 293. I used it along with many other local places from the Highland Falls/Fort Montgomery area as a backdrop setting for a story about what I like to refer to as a “Triple Cross”
The song is about a planned double cross that happened during an illicit substance purchase. However, even though everyone had rehearsed their part, something goes wrong and the plan goes sideways. Chaos ensues, gunfire is exchanged, and a fire breaks out burning Dickies to the ground. The narrator assumes everyone and everything is lost in the fire. Twenty years later he’s still suffering from PTSD and is now living down in New York City. One day, while at JFK airport, he thinks he sees his old girlfriend there, so he follows her back to her apartment to discover all this time she was still alive and had set him up.
This is another song that has a strong Bruce Springsteen influence to it. We open the song with a beautiful piano intro by Aaron Durr. I wanted to create something like Springsteen's intro to “New York City Serenade” or “Backstreets”. I believe we executed on it perfectly. The song's rhythms as well as the rhyming patterns of the lyrics are also pure 1970’s Springsteen. It's my favorite song on the album.
On this song I played rhythm guitar while Sarven Manguiat again handled all the lead guitar work. Rob Hall was on bass; Stephen Haaker was on Drums; Aaron Durr was on Keyboards. Harrison and Phoebe Crenshaw along with Diana Ortiz are on backing vocals. The song was engineered and produced by Brett Grossman and Stephen Haaker. We recorded it at Perfect Sound Studios in Frogtown CA and Cosmic Voyager Studio in Los Angeles. The song was mastered by Emily Lazar at the Lodge in NY.