American Songwriter: Thomas Strayhorn Yearns for Younger Days on “Year of the Cicada”

… “I have such vivid memories of walking around my neighborhood as a kid and being fascinated by their screeching, so I dove into the idea for a bit,” he says. “I was drawn to the idea of a cicada because they make so much noise but they’re hard to spot unless you’re really looking for them. They also resurface in mass quantities every 17 years which I find incredibly fascinating. 17 years ago I was a tiny child running around a playground.”

Considering the parallels, he continues, “Everything always seems to change so quickly, I found it comforting to pause for a second and zoom out to cicada scale.”

Some of the best songwriting advice he has received is to observe as much as possible and to keep a pen and notebook nearby. Additionally, he was instructed to find a balance between simplicity and specificity in writing.

This sage wisdom coalesced into “Year of the Cicada.” While keeping a keen eye on the world around him, Strayhorn learned to look inward in order to reckon with the internal forces at play. In his attempt to understand his fleeting relationship with place, the artist clung to specific memories of cicadas. Sonically, he wields the mystique of his young mind to reimagine the cicada’s droning score—a hymn for a smoldering Southern summer.

“When I wrote the song I was definitely intending to touch on the nostalgia that simple sounds can evoke,” he shares. “I love simplicity so I tend to keep things rather straightforward, but this one was especially easy.”

Strayhorn recorded the song with James Phillips (Bombadil) and Ford Garrard (Boy Named Banjo) in Durham in the spring of 2019. The video, shot by Durham poet Kristi Stout, portrays the familiar mugginess that the soundscape evokes.

— Madeline Crone

INDY WEEK: Lose Yourself in the Year of the Cicada

… In Thomas Strayhorn's "Year of the Cicada," premiering on the INDY website today, cicadas evoke that emotional clock, alongside feelings of love, loss, and nearing change, as Strayhorn, in his confident, aching voice, croons "Been sleeping with you by my side / I'm trying, I swear that I'm trying." 

Strayhorn isn't the first musician to find inspiration in the muggy droning of periodical cicadas: This summer, when Brood X makes landfall (or, makes air-full), they will be the fourth cycle since that generation of cicada inspired Bob Dylan's "Year of the Locust" in 1970. 

Strayhorn, who is based between Portland, Maine, and North Carolina, recorded the song with James Phillips (Bombadil) and Ford Garrard (Boy Named Banjo) in Durham in the spring of 2019. At the time, he says, he was renovating an older mill home in the area and trying to decide whether to stay or move on. Standing in the house with a cup of coffee in his home, one morning, a wave of nostalgia hit.

"I had been pouring my energy into the house I was renovating, giving a lot of time to a comfortable relationship, and was still feeling like I needed to leave North Carolina again," Strayhorn says. "[I had the] conflicting emotions of having so many reasons to stay somewhere, but still wanting to leave." …

— Sarah Edwards