I wrote "Internal Crash" after my grandfather had a profound stroke. It was really hard on my family, especially because there aren't a lot of us: My dad's dad died when he was only two years old, and his mom died when I was nine. My dad has one brother, my mom has one brother, and I'm an only child.
Tom Lennon Curry was my grandfather's name. I called him Bapa. The reason Bapa had the stroke was because he found out later in life that he had a hole in his heart. He was instructed to take baby aspirin every day, but he forgot one night, and he had the stroke.
I wrote the song with the false hope that he was going to make a full recovery. He did actually live for another seven years, but he was paralyzed on one side of his body, and his quality of life was never the same. It was really sad. I loved Bapa so much. I still remember the day he introduced me to ginger ale when I was four and the fun I had attempting to drive his golf cart when I was nine. Above is a photo of me and Bapa.
Also, here's a photo of him at age 18 or 19 as a soldier. Bapa hit the beach in Normandy, France as an artillery gunner in WWII. At one point, he was blown out of a slit trench, and everyone in his platoon died but him. He was MIA in a French hospital for three months, and his family thought he was gone.One thing I never thought was particularly fair was how much the war messed up Bapa physically and emotionally. I think it's enough bad shit to go through in one lifetime. So why did he have to spend the last seven years of his life paralyzed and almost deaf and blind?
A couple years before he passed, I interviewed Bapa about his experiences. It was the first time that my grandmother, Nancy (or Neena as I still call her), and my parents had heard the whole story. I asked him about having to kill other people and he simply said, "Kill or be killed." Man, that's heartbreaking.
Anyway, I'm very happy that Jacob decided to honor our song and my grandfather by doing his cover of it. His version is fantastic. The original is much more stripped down. Here's the piano version from It's Yours to Keep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=654sBe5AiYs. (And here's one with me, guitar, and piano on our Fall EP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7H5j3CS96w.)
