The Accidentals - Night Train (Official Music Video)

Night Train might be one of our favorite co-writes. We wrote Night Train with Dar Williams. It’s rare you meet a story-teller as gifted as Dar. Dar was there (in a way) when I was born. The story is, her song, Beauty of the Rain, was playing on the portable speaker by the hospital bed. When we were just starting to tour, we were seventeen and eighteen and we had the chance to open for her at The Birchmere. She asked us to sit in on strings with her at the end of her set. That night truly felt full circle. When we knew these co-writes were going to become the TIME OUT EP, we reached out to her and asked her to write a song with us. We were absolutely blown away when she said yes. Over many zoom calls, we were enthralled by her stories of a train ride she took right before the world shut down. She wove a tale about the towns she passed through, the people she met, the landscape, the possibilities. It was so healing to listen to another musician talk about traveling and the power of community. We know the kind of magic you experience in meeting strangers, finding common ground, becoming friends in one conversation, and coming to the realization that we are more alike than not, and there is more goodness in the world than we might believe. Night Train became an anthem for our small towns, communities, our country, for the work we have to do, for the hope and light that exists. It’s about healing and investing in our future. It’s the rally call. This song seems really simple but it was one of the hardest to record - we ended up stripping down the drums at the last minute to let Katie's vocal and the story speak a little louder. In the final hour, middle of the night we were working on this tune and felt like it needed something to fill out the bridge so we sent it to Sav's dad and asked him to lay a piano track. Thank goodness he is usually available at 2am. We spent a little extra time on the vocals on this one - really trying to create a flow that felt natural. This is one of those songs that feels like it will stand the test of time. TIME OUT EP coming May 7th.