"Goodbye" by The Ghost of Paul Revere
On April 18th, 2022, Maine-based folk band The Ghost of Paul Revere shared a post to their social media platforms beginning with the question, “how does one write an obituary for a Ghost?”
The band had been performing for the past eleven years, beginning in small venues in the local Portland area, eventually reaching enough success to take their tours abroad. Their style of stomp-and-holler folk and small band Americana is honest, raw, and personal. Songs about loss and depression are numerous in their discography. When they reach their audience, the Ghost of Paul Revere knows where to hit them hard.
The core of the Ghost of Paul Revere— Max Davis on banjo, Sean McCarthy on bass, and Griffin Sherry on guitar— are childhood friends. The three all write their own music and switch out the role of lead vocalist depending on the song, using three-part harmonies to form a cohesive sound. Each songwriter has their own distinctive style and voice that they bring to the band’s performances and records. The individuality the three are able to express in their work, as well as the unity and friendship they clearly convey, is a unique dynamic that has built a devoted fanbase in the past decade, particularly in New England.
“It is with a mix of both profound sadness and gratitude that we announce the end of this strange experiment called The Ghost of Paul Revere,” the band announced in that fateful post. They explained that their last show together would be at their annual Labor Day weekend festival, Ghostland, and that one last album would be released before their departure.
That album was released the day before Ghostland, and it was fittingly titled Goodbye. The Ghost of Paul Revere never officially announced when the album would be released, but I— and I’m sure many other fans— had a feeling it would drop that Friday night. The album provided everything I needed to prepare me for the final Ghostland, for parting with a band that had gotten me through senior year of high school, a global pandemic, and the first two years of college. I happily played that album knowing that I could experience their new music for one last time, and the Ghost certainly delivered a satisfying conclusion to a long journey.
Despite being every inch the Ghost of Paul Revere that I know and love, Goodbye is a special and significant record. The entire album carries an air of melancholy and distance, lacking in their distinctive harmonies in comparison to their other records, as if the bandmates were already drifting away from another. While the last two LPs by the band, Good at Losing Everything and Monarch, leaned into the production and big sound of recent Americana music, Goodbye strips the band back to their roots. That is, with one new addition: an electric guitar cuts through their folky songs, a new but resonating inclusion to their last album.
Sean McCarthy’s songs — “In Deep,” “Older Lately,” and “Goodbye”— are some of the strongest on the album, which is exciting as his voice had been the quietest on the last few records. “In Deep,” a rock-leaning love song about a woman who would rather “spend her days in the garden” than out in the world, had been performed multiple times on the band’s last tour. Along with Griffin Sherry’s “Letters From the War of Love and Loss,” it is easy to see that “In Deep” will become a staple amongst fans as the epitome of the Ghost’s high-energy songs.
“JTE,” an ode to their fellow Americana artist Justin Townes Earle, who passed away from a drug overdose in 2020, is a personal favorite of mine. It’s simple but heavy, a clear example of Sherry’s ability to capture the complexity of the human spirit and grief in less than four minutes: “A boy of infinite sadness / full of fire, full of madness / holding up a mirror for us all.” Max Davis’s haunting “Knuckle” is another standout track that I can see becoming a fan favorite. The slow pace and methodic lyrics abstractly depict the life of a suffering artist, creating something sonically similar to some of Davis’s earlier works with the band, providing a nice bookend to his time with the Ghost.
Goodbye accomplishes everything it sets out to complete. It rounds out the Ghost of Paul Revere’s discography, letting each of the three songwriters lean into the individual sounds they have developed over the years. It celebrates loss and a departure from the known, while still looking towards the future with a type of hope and familiarity that comes to the Ghost naturally.
My dad and I listened to the album on our way up to Portland for the final Ghostland. We stood at the front of the crowd for hours, watching the opening acts and meeting our temporary neighbors, all who shared as much enthusiasm for the band as we did. When night fell, thousands of people swarmed closer to the stage, locking us all in tight. Governor Janet Mills introduced each band member to the stage with tremendous applause. Two flag-bearers then appeared, vigorously waving two state flags as the band began their “Ballad of 20th Maine,” the true tale of a sailor-turned-soldier who witnessed the bloodshed and eventual victory of the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg. The crowd, full of proud Mainers, was already in a frenzy, screaming the lyrics: “If we should die today, then dream a dream of heaven / take your northern hearts with you to the grave!” The rousing narrative song was an incredible start to what would become an unforgettable evening.
The last song before the encore was “San Antone.” The band played with so much fervor that Sherry broke a guitar string halfway through the song, leaving everyone else to laugh and carry on with the chorus until a replacement guitar was quickly brought on stage. They finished the song even stronger than they started it, leaving the audience in a state of joyful chaos.
The last of four encore songs was the anticipated “This is the End.” Friends, family, and crew were brought on stage for the band’s final song as The Ghost of Paul Revere. The song, which had resonated for audiences for nearly a decade and closed out countless of the band’s shows, was screamed by over 6,000 people on the banks of the Atlantic Ocean. Sherry, at the center of the stage, hollered the last verse over the crowd: “Well, this bird has flown, this ship has sunk / man, tie my hands and leave me dead in the trunk / just don’t ask me if I’m doing okay,” and the audience, as they had for years before, yelled back, “‘cause I’m not okay!”
Then it was over. The Ghost of Paul Revere left the stage to endless applause. Thousands of fans took their time to leave the venue, slowly trudging back to their own lives. The community that came together at that last Ghostland was unlike anything I had seen before. Everybody in that crowd had their own connections to the songs the band played, and many had a personal connection to the band itself. The Ghost’s music has been so influential on my own life because of the fluid, compelling storytelling in each song. More than that, as I have gotten older and drifted further apart from my family and comforts of my childhood, I have found that their music reminds me of home. The stories they share sound authentically like New England, and many of their songs are about feeling homesick for the same places I miss. The narrators of their songs dream of mountains, of pine trees and snow, of the rough waters of the Atlantic. For over a decade, by writing from their own perspective, the Ghost of Paul Revere has been singing to people like me. People who go out to chase dreams and leave their home behind, relying on folktales and nostalgia to keep them going forward.
There may never be another band that speaks to me like the Ghost of Paul Revere. I know I will keep listening to their music for years to come, even if this truly is the end. However, I think it is best to end with the words of hope that McCarthy shared with the audience halfway through the final Ghostland: “remember, ghosts can never really die.”
- Emma Abate