The Girl That's Never Been
by Michelle Dockrey

It was sixteen years ago, outside an aging movie show
I was found not knowing where I was that night
Not a thing did I possess but an old blue gingham dress
And a faded photograph in black and white
Now my memories are quite clear, even if I still can hear
All the shrinks who said some trauma was to blame
Light another cigarette, breathe in deep, try to forget
That it's a photograph of Dinah and that Alice is my name

Save me, save me, I've lost my memory
I'm outside the world looking in
Save me, save me, I'm lost in the memory
And I'd swear I'm a girl that's never been

Now it's all the life I knew, except I know it can't be true
I'm not her, there's no such thing as Wonderland
Hold a steady job somehow, three months clean and sober now
Oh, the ways I tried to get back there again
"Try to move on, don't be sad," so I place a personal ad
And ask, "why is a raven like a writing desk?"
And on the phone, out of the past, so glad he's found me now at last
And I'm afraid to go and meet him but I know my answer's yes

Save me, save me, I've lost my memory
I'm outside the world looking in
Save me, save me, I'm lost in the memory
And I'd swear I'm a girl that's never been

Just another city loner wearing sunglasses at night
Leather jacket, purple turtleneck and blue jeans worn too tight
Just a rummie by the jukebox in a casual curious pose
But I don't know how he knows the things he knows

Well he sits down with a grin, "Why little Alice, where've you been?
Not so little, not so Alice, now, are you?"
As he sips my untouched drink, I say "I can't be who I think."
He says "You are, and you're not, and I am too.
Are we figments of our gin? Are we long-lost orphaned kin?
Or the mad descendants of a writer's pen?
No one's sane behind their mask. Ask what you really want to ask."
And I close my eyes and whisper, "Can you take me back again?"

Save me, save me, I've lost my memory
I'm outside the world looking in
Save me, save me, I'm lost in the memory
And I'd swear I'm a girl that's never been

"Darling Alice, so bereft, there's no back, you never left.
All the rhymes are still there waiting to be sung."
And he holds up in the air a little picture paper square
Slips between my lips and underneath my tongue.
"Shall I tell you now, Miss Little, what's the answer to the riddle
Of the raven that you used to send your call?"
He takes the glasses off to see, yellow cat's eyes turns on me, and says,
"It's nothing like a writing desk at all."

Save me, save me, I've lost my memory
I'm outside the world looking in
Save me, save me, I'm lost in the memory
And I'd swear I'm a girl that's never been
And he faded, leaving nothing but a grinnnnnnnn

About the Song

Vixy:
Possibly my most filked song; definitely my most garbled song title. The number of ways people mix up this title rivals the number of misspellings I used to get of my maiden name. I don't know what I was thinking; it's an awkward phrasing. That's just how it came to me!

As everybody probably knows by now, it's based on the short story "The Cheshire" by Bill Kte'pi. Tep gave me the story years ago— decades ago, now— as a birthday gift. It has always meant a great deal to me, and I'm happy to have an updated version of the song with the full band.

About the Songwriting

Vixy:
Oh man. Some songs just trip right off the pen. This was not one of those songs. I fought hard, I lost sleep, I kept my song notebook by the bed for weeks trying to do the story justice. It was worth every moment of frustration; I keep expecting people to get tired of it, but something about it still speaks to people. It helps when you have a great story to start from.

The main refrain comes from a specific line in the story: Alice's hidden acrostic in her ad. I was pretty proud of that little Easter egg.

About the Recording

Tony:
I had always wanted to remake this song with a full production. There are a lot of filkers who have covered the song beautifully, but most of the covers I've heard have gone for a sort of dreamy, gentle, sad style, playing chord inversions with spooky overtones, and generally turning it into an introspective "ose" number. Vixy, for her part, had always wanted it to feel kind of angry. Kathleen Sloan once described the song's main character as someone who'd been "ridden hard and put away wet", which I found hilarious and perfect. So I enjoyed going full rock 'n roll with it. I wanted to make it downright peppy. I think we succeeded. In the end, it sort of has the feel of songs by They Might Be Giants: cheerful on the surface, but having some darkness if you dig a little.

The first step in that direction was having Brian lay down a perfect rockabilly drum part. His part is just brilliant in every possible way, he picked up the feel we were going for immediately and just knocked it out of the park.

Then there was Chris Clark's perfect bass line. It's full of everything that makes his playing great: The playfulness, the show-stealing cool riffs, the happy, cheerful style. He is perfect on this song.

Vixy retracked a new vocal that matched what Brian and Chris did, fitting perfectly and having just the right balance of bubbliness and anger and longing. She sang it differently in this recording than she has in the past. I think this is a particularly great lead vocal part.

Then Betsy and Sunnie's perfect strings gave it the right undercurrent of spooky moodiness that lives just below the surface.

The tough part for me was getting the electric guitars just right. It took several tries for me to lay down electric guitar parts which lived up to what Brian and Chris had done on their first try. In the end, in the mix, I think that Brian and Chris are still the stars and the electric guitars just add texture. This is fine with me!

One of the issues with the electric guitars was that I had been recording them direct-in, and they didn't sound quite right that way. Then I found an amp/cabinet simulator VST plug-in that I liked, which smoothed out the parts pefectly and made them sit in the mix the way I wanted them to.

Finally we enlisted Jodi Krangle to do backing vocals, because she had offered. Vixy was looking for a certain sound for the two songs on the album which were the most "rock 'n roll", and Jodi stepped up and came up with a fantastic backing part.

This song had the same verse/chorus dynamics problem that Dawson's Christian had, and I implemented the same fix for it: I had to automate the main output bus down, and the drums correspondingly up, on each chorus.