I had moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles after living in the Bay Area for a few years and I was contemplating L.A.'s geographical peculiarities that make it what it is. I helped clean up a mini park along the L.A. River in the Atwater area as a volunteer, and it got me thinking about all the possibilities for the River as a source of vitality for Angelenos. As we were picking weird trash out of the dirt along this deserted paved river, I thought of the river that runs through Austin, Texas where I'd visited a couple years before. Every evening bats fly out from beneath a bridge and you can just gather and watch them. You can stroll along the river in the middle of the city. You can swim in the river in certain places, and people do. Families do. I yearn for that for L.A.
Some time fter that, I participated in the Great L.A. River Cleanup / La Gran Limpieza, and tramped through one of the few unpaved stretches of the L.A. River, in Lake Balboa Park in the San Fernando Valley. Trash so permeates the River that it's hard to separate the natural and the manmade, even conceptually speaking. I sat to rest on the banks next to at least a dozen shopping carts that had been fished out and just piled on top of each other.
Shortly afterward, I was thinking about how to define folk music to children. At some point in that thought process, this song just kind of came out. And that's all there is to it.
lyrics
there's a river runs through the city that I live in
there's a river runs through the city that I know
there's a shopping cart in the river in my city
there's a lone rain boot that lost its only friend
there're a thousand birds in the river in my city
they may be the only ones who know where my river ends
there are real live fish in the river in my city
there are matted plastic bags, now one with little trees
there's an unpaved stretch of the river in my city
what's buried underneath the rest may stay a mystery
"i wouldn't touch that water in the river in your city"
that's what some people say, they worry about health
that's lifeblood there, that's the river in my city
and though it isn't safe, still it flows downstream
once I took a trip and saw another city
the river there was full of swimming kids
there were turtles too in the river in that city
I knew I was not alone, and I jumped right in
there's a river runs through the city that I live in
there's a river runs through the city that I know
there's a river runs through the city that I live in
there's a river runs through the city that I love
credits
from Wail EP,
released September 13, 2013
music and lyrics by Lauren Kinney
Lauren Kinney: voice, guitar
Brad Laner: guitar, bass, voice
Jim Goodall: drums
recorded and produced by Brad Laner at Eichler Sound
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