River Whyless, a band known for its evocative storytelling, is marking the second anniversary of Hurricane Helene’s impact on Western North Carolina with a poignant new release. The song, “One of a Thousand,” penned by band member Daniel Shearin, reflects on the personal and communal aftermath of the devastating storm.
BPR’s Helen Chickering delved into the creation of this song with Shearin, uncovering the layers of emotion and inquiry it holds.
When Nature Strikes
“When Helene hit, we were all at home, and home for me is West Asheville. Home for the drummer Alex and the other guitarist and singer Ryan is in Swannanoa. Halli Anderson, singer and violinist, lives in Oregon. We didn’t really have a way to communicate, and we couldn’t really check in with each other. We didn’t really understand the scope of it beyond what we could see with our own eyes. Alex and Ryan lost access to and from their house and had to hike out, and I met them with a truck. Driving through all of that, those images are still stuck in my head,” Shearin recounted.
The Birth of a Song
The initial musings of “One of a Thousand” emerged from Shearin strumming his guitar, haunted by the memory of a family affected by the storm. “I remember just sitting with the guitar, kind of playing a little bit of a riff or some chords, and I just started singing. And this is the first verse, more or less what came out. It was about one of the most heartbreaking stories of many. I knew one of the people a little bit, not well, but I knew her. For some reason I just couldn’t get that out of my head, and so whenever I started singing, that’s just kind of what came out,” he explained.
Questioning Frequency
The title, “One of a Thousand,” stems from the recurring discussions post-Helene, as Shearin noted, “After the storm, people kept describing Helene as a one-in-a-thousand-year event. But in the same breath, people were also treating it like it might happen again, like this could be the start of something new. That’s where the name comes from. The song is called One of a Thousand, which poses that same question: is it one in a thousand, or one of a thousand? I lean toward the one of a thousand, based on the way things are looking. And I’m hoping I’m wrong.”
A Global Context
Shearin’s lyrics also resonate with global climate events, as he reflected, “By the time I was writing those words, it hadn’t even been a year, and we had already seen the catastrophic, record-breaking fires in L.A., the record-breaking flooding in Texas, and then also in Valencia. In the song, I say the word phantom thorn, meaning I feel a pain when I hear these other stories. It’s more than just empathy. Before, hearing about these things was always painful, but it was based on empathy, imagining what that was like. But now it’s more like, we know what that’s like, and to even feel that again is painful.”
Despite the anguish, Shearin finds some solace in the insights gained, stating, “I wouldn’t say I’m grateful in any way to have that experience, but I’m grateful for the perspective it’s given me.”
The song One of a Thousand is currently available on Bandcamp, with plans for a streaming release on September 28.
