Owen Ashworth is taking Advance Base out on tour in the coming weeks, with a string of dates across the East and Midwest in November with Moontype, then a series of Christmas shows with Kristin Daelyn and Greg Jamie in December (full details below). He has used the occasion to put out two new singles, ‘Movie Theater Manager’ and ‘Blue Christmas 2’, via Orindal Records. Fans of Ashworth’s work will already know him as a master of the festive theme, his back catalogue peppered with tracks that are fundamentally Christmas songs yet can be played all year round, and these new singles are welcome additions to the style. Both are self-contained narratives, about far more than any one time of year, yet crafted from the sentiment and melancholy of Christmastime in the way Ashworth has made his own. “These songs feel like distant companions, both inspired by real life movie theater and bank robberies,” he explains. “Some recalled from my movie theater days and others from further back in American history. I think of them as two parts of a loose trilogy with the Casiotone for the Painfully Alone song ‘Traveling Salesman’s Young Wife Home Alone on Christmas in Montpelier, VT’. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.”
Perhaps the least overtly festive song of the supposed trilogy, ‘Movie Theater Manager’ draws on personal experience to tell the tale of an armed robbery at a movie house with characteristic nuance and pathos. A tale of lonely people getting by however they can. Working late at the cinema, counting the cash in the office upstairs before the night drop at the bank, or else walking into the same theatre with a pistol and a set of demands. Supporting vocals from Margaret McCarthy of Moontype further the emotion, the whole thing bathed in a nocturnal air, where the sad rhythms of routine are accompanied by a sense of possibility, as though the solitude of the night brings with it small dreams and a vague temptation to change your life by doing something drastic. “I wonder how far / all that money could take me / if I just kept walking,” the narrator muses as they take the evening’s profits to the bank. Though one person’s idle musings are another’s grand strategy.
“‘Movie Theater Manager’ was inspired by some of my experiences working at San Francisco movie theaters in the late 90s,” Ashworth explains, “a period of my life that remains vivid in my memory. The song came back to me a few weeks ago after watching the Clint Eastwood movie Escape From Alcatraz with my kid.” The Eastwood movie directly inspires the middle verses of the song, where the narrator shares a dream in which they come across family letters while babysitting back in Vermont. Namely notes addressed to their aunt from their uncle, who is himself serving time for a series of bank robberies.
In most of his letters
he said he was sorry &
wanted forgiveness
The last one’s a postcard
from after he broke out
it said Merry Christmas
As its title suggests, ‘Blue Christmas 2’ is more openly festive, the narrative present of the song situated on Christmas evening. The protagonist is another lonely figure moving through the night, first in a diner where they sit with their coffee and pumpkin pie, alone but for the waitress and Elvis on the radio. At least before the former changes the station (“I hate that tune” she said / “What Christmas isn’t blue? / I don’t need to hear it / from him, too”). Later, on driving to a motel, the narrator shares a memory of their own robbery, hitting a bank on Christmas Eve with an apparent significant other (if a partner in crime could be anything else?). The pair, both dressed as Santa Claus, got away with the cash, only to later part and learn something went wrong, their loneliness sealed and plans scuppered, Christmas turned blue in more ways than one.
We drove through the night to Wichita Falls
where I left you at your mama’s house
& as you pulled your bag out the back of the Buick
You said to me “Merry Christmas, bud!”
Movie Theater Manager is out now via Orindal Records and available from Bandcamp. Check out the Advance Base tour dates below and buy tickets here.
