The Lonesome Whip-poor-will

One of the most surprising references to a Whip-poor-will appears on the opening track, “Lonesome,” of the rock band Dr. Dog’s 2012 album, Be the Void. Pitchfork calls this track a “postscript to Hank Williams’ immortal ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ (not, sadly, written from the whippoorwills’ perspective).”

It’s a jaunty track indeed. And it hurries to its violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which prohibits the killing of migratory birds like the Whip-poor-will. After opening with the song’s chorus, we get to the shooting.

What does it take to be lonesome?
Nothing at all
What does it take to be lonesome?
Nothing at all

My thoughts are wicked and rotten
My goat don't wanna be gotten
And I had my fill of the Whip-poor-will
When he broke into song I shot him
Leave me alone

Why shoot a Whip-poor-will?

Why shoot a Whip-poor-will (figuratively, of course)? In part, the act fits the two underlying themes of the song.

The loneliness of lonesomeness. What does it take to be lonesome? Literally, as Dr. Dog’s singer Scott McMicken sings, “nothing at all.” Our human lonesomeness is most itself when it is unadorned by others who sympathize, even if that other is a persistent Whip-poor-will.

Leave Me Alone. Another theme of the song, which also motivates the shooting, is McMicken’s demands that others leave him alone. Not only is lonesomeness most itself with nothing at all, but, here, it craves this state. I get it, too. There is virtue, a wisdom, and comfort, even, in loneliness. And McMicken doesn’t want others’ easy symbols of their own loneliness — later verses invoke trains and moons — to intrude.

I suspect there’s more to it than this. The Whip-poor-will’s lonesomeness is now, dare I say, a bit cliché. It’s an easy image to grab, thanks to Hank Williams’s singular lonesomeness. That “Will” rhymes with other basic words further waters down the image. (Perhaps rhyme the scientific name instead, Antrostomus vociferus?)

I suspect this is why McMicken sings that he’s had his fill of the bird. It’s too much with us in derivative songs about the lonesome. But of course McMicken attempts to go further. By shooting the lonesome Whip-poor-will and, in later verses, by snubbing his nose at a train and mocking the moon, McMicken swerves on the clichés.

Symbolic Killings

But perhaps there’s one thing McMicken doesn’t know about the folklore surrounding Whip-poor-wills. He’s not the first to symbolically kill one. In Marjorie Tallman’s 1959 book, Dictionary of American Folklore, we learn that

to avoid the tragedy that might come if a bird is heard near the home, … one should point a finger at it, as if attempting to kill it symbolically. This protection is supposed to help even if the bird is not seen.

Featured Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash