With the holiday season in full swing, millions of Americans are subjecting themselves to the indignities of air travel. Security theater! Endless delays! Cramped seats! Endless delays! Want to know a better way to get from Point A to Point B? Taking the train! Sure, cross-country trips take a day or two and it ain’t exactly cheap, but it’s super chill and it can be romantic as hell. Except if you wanted to take a train from Milwaukee to Madison. That would be a terrible idea, apparently.
Anyway, enter good-time Milwaukee country band Ladybird. In the video for the new “Lounge Car Love Song,” singer Pete Freeman and pals hop aboard the ol’ Amtrak (headed from Milwaukee to Columbus), set up shop in the observation/lounge car, and sing about the unlikely connections one can make while riding the rails. Oh, and there’s some nifty 16mm snippets and plenty of footage from a Circle-A show, too.
“I wrote [the song] after taking the train to La Crosse to visit my uncle last summer,” Freeman says. “It involves two characters who are down on their luck and catch each other on a brief train ride heading to Wisconsin’s west coast.”
“Lounge Car Love Song” comes from an EP that Ladybird plans to release in January. Until then, enjoy this Amtrak lounge car photo that this author took on his way to Denver on March 12, 2020—a.k.a. the very first day of the pandemic.
Exclusive articles, podcasts, and more. Support Milwaukee Record on Patreon.
RELATED ARTICLES
• New Milwaukee country band Ladybird enjoys life’s simple pleasures in debut single, “Zoomer”
• Pete Freeman can’t catch a break in “Song About Nothing” video
• Pete Freeman doesn’t want buildings scraping his sky in “Skylines & Distilleries”
• There’s finally (finally!) a song about Front Row Amy
• Please don’t move to Milwaukee, sings Milwaukee musician in response to that Vogue article