One fine day back in the ’90s, my buddy Dan and I were wandering around Oak Park—probably looking for meaning, or maybe just coffee. I happened to be carrying my acoustic, as one does after being awake all night (which was sort of our Sunday tradition). We were still... let’s just say philosophically altered.
On the other side of Harlem Ave, in Forest Park, there was a whole thing going on—turns out it was “Forest Park Days” or something equally festive. Live music, people having fun, the works. We stopped to check out a band called Butterfly McQueen—a jangly, folksy group with a female singer. They were actually pretty good.
On the way back to Oak Park, we plopped down in an open field to regroup, and I started strumming what would become the hook for this song. It just sort of fell out of the guitar. I improvised some ridiculous lyrics about our day, and Dan and I couldn’t stop laughing—but the riff stuck with me.
This song later made it onto Dr. Wippit’s 1st Time Out, recorded on my trusty 8-track cassette machine. My goal was to make it sound as trippy as possible—which, predictably, was also its downfall. I ran a twelve-string acoustic through a flanger, put flange on the bass too (because why not), and topped it off with some psychedelic lead guitar. At that point I didn’t even know what the song was about, so I just labeled the tape Butterfly McQueen.
Eventually I wrote lyrics about life’s little cycles—showing up here to learn a few lessons, hoping to come back next time a bit less clueless. I renamed it Meadow, after that field where it all started. Like a lot of early Dr. Wippit tracks, I loved the song but… yeah, it sounded like trash.
Years later, while re-recording it for An Anthology of Sorts, I was determined to keep that trippy lead guitar. I’d used a preset on my old RP12 called something like “Freak Out” or “Pshycho,” and when I eased in the effect with the expression pedal, it hit that sweet spot of chaos and melody I’d wanted all along.
But there was a catch—no drums. And since the tempo wandered around like we did that Sunday morning, it wasn’t exactly easy to add new rhythm parts. So I programmed drums, time-stretched them section by section, and finally had something to build on. Clean acoustic, the original bass line, and the same trippy lead—suddenly it sounded like what I’d been chasing 14 years earlier.
As with most of my songs, I bounced rough mixes off friends for feedback. Danny Brown, the drummer from my cover band Tastes Like Chicken, asked, “So… no drums?” I explained the tempo chaos, and he shot back, “Not even a hand drum?” Touché.
So I handed him the mix and said, “You’ve got a week.” A week later, he laid down hand drums into my trusty H4 while listening on headphones. I mixed them in, along with new vocals and a fresh six-string rhythm track. Finally—it sounded finished.
All this reminiscing made me curious about Butterfly McQueen, the band that started it all. Turns out their guitarist was from The Freddy Jones Band, and the singer—Nancy Stone—is still making music. You can check her out here:
Nancy Stone – Stonegrooves.
