Tell Me About That Song: Chris Collingwood, Vocalist of Power-Pop Band Fountains of Wayne

By Joe Williams Tue., Sep. 27 2011 at 8:30 AM

Categories: MP3s

Violeta Alvarez

Fountains of Wayne -- Chris Collingwood, Brian Young, Adam Schlesinger, Jody Porter -- play the Crocodile on October 7.

A lot went into writing your favorite song--but how much do you really know about it? This week Chris Collingwood, vocalist of the power-pop four-piece responsible for the 2003 Billboard topper "Stacy's Mom," Fountains of Wayne, delves into Tom Hanks movies, working with your hands, and dying with a ton of money in the bank.

Song: "Workingman's Hands"
From Album: Sky Full of Holes
Release Date: Aug. 2
Where it was written: Right here in my living room, in western Massachusetts

Favorite line in the song: "Oh, you save your money for a hole in the ground."

I think that's just because there's a part in the song, "You're Uncle John walked a mile to school." My Uncle John actually did die when I was writing that song and it found its way into that song. He was an old Pennsylvania Dutch guy, and he died--I guess he was in his 80s or something--he died with a lot of money in the bank. It just kind of shocked everybody. He died alone, never went anywhere his entire life, never did anything, really. I'm pretty sure he never left Pennyslvania. And he had a lot of money and it was just a big shock because he didn't even have any family left. So what was the point of that, really?

Which part was the hardest to come up with? Once I was clear on what I wanted to do with it, it was pretty easy. And I think a lot of songs are that way, where it feels like a Mad Lib or a crossword puzzle, where once you figure out the little clue and the angle then a lot of it kind of writes it self. The verses in that song are pretty much like a list, obviously until you get to that left-turn part of it.

If you could go back and change anything, what would it be? It's really hard for me to have perspective on those types of things. I think by the time you end up writing, producing, arranging something, and made so many decisions along the way, you kind of lose track of what you imagined when you started. I mean some songs actually--there's another song on this record called "Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart," and when I look at my early notes for that song and originally what was going on in that song before it became what it is now, I was like, "What the hell am I doing?" It's really, really hard to retrace my mental steps backwards, and I think part of that is just because you're building on a foundation of something, and then if you quickly abandon it and your brain is still focused on something else, you've kind of already moved five steps past where that other step would have taken you.

Odd fact about song: The title was kicking around for the longest time, and I had written three or four versions of that song and it's kind of . . . it was not about what it ended up being about. Originally that title was based on a friend of ours [Mike Viola] who is really an amazing and poetic songwriter, he has these stubby little fingers, and he used to work in a pizza restaurant. When I first met him he was still working there, so that tells you how long ago it was. I guess it was in like 1991 or something. He's a songwriter in L.A. now, and he's actually the one that sang "That Thing You Do!" which [Adam Schlesinger] wrote for the Tom Hanks movie, so you know his voice probably if nothing else.

When I first met Mike, he was playing me these songs that he wrote, and he was an amazing songwriter with just like an amazing kind of melodic, tender, beautiful voice and great sense of melody, and I noticed he was playing these songs and at the same time he had these beat-up hands from working in a pizza restaurant, and that's kind of where the title actually came from to begin with. It was supposed to be kind of contrasting his day-to-day sort of grueling life working in his family business, with his genius ability. And the title had just been sitting around for the longest time, and I hadn't been able to make it work. I'm not really sure why. But then it ended up being used for a completely different context on that record. I actually think that one of the most interesting parts about that song is that when the record first came out, I got a lot of e-mails from people. People were talking about that song, saying they could really relate to it, and it was an homage to working people, and a lot of people really missed the little left turn that it takes at one point. It's kind of an interesting study in hearing what you want to hear when you listen to a song.

When was your favorite time performing it live? You know we've only played that song live like twice. Interestingly, I think it's one of those things where the production on that turned into such a lush, big kind of thing. There's a 12-string guitar with a Nashville tuning--which is this open tuning--and it kind of gives it that really harpsichord sound, that shimmer over the top of it. And I think that without that, the song really suffers a lot trying to play it live without a lot of ornamentation, so we've only played it like once or twice. Probably if we got to the point where we could afford to have a 12-piece band, that would be one of my favorite things to play. But at the moment it doesn't really have a live life yet.

What is the meaning behind the song: The song probably ended up being one of the most autobiographical things that we ever did, in the sense that it's almost completely about the way I grew up and the conflicting value systems between myself and my family. My upbringing was one in which you're taught that you learn values through hard work, and other times it was hard work for very little purpose. Getting up at the crack of dawn and hammering stakes and digging holes, moving rocks around, and my reaction to that was that it was always kind of misdirected energy and kind of a waste of time. So, when you reach the point in the song where the guy has a chip on his shoulder, [that] was sort of about my childhood battles with that value system, which sounds kind of pretentious. But obviously at the end, the idea is that you don't really live that long, so why are you wasting all your time doing this crap?

The overall message in that song is that tired old trite carpe diem thing. Don't waste your life digging fence-post holes. I'm OK with that. I'm OK with it being a really simple idea. A lot of times when I'm working on stuff I end up biting off more than I can chew, and it ends up drowning in its own obfuscation.