I saw them play this live and Amy explained the song during an instrumental break. It was amazing because it was the first time the song made any sense to me. The chicken man was an old guy selling stuff on the side of the highway. I remember she started her explanation by saying that, when they were first touring, she was driving around in a beat up VW(?) and she was saddened seeing so many dead animals (roadkill: "median" cat(?), dead deer, prairie dogs, rabbit). She said something about the woman who was beaten in Austin; again, another reflection from life on the road at the time, I think. She then said something about how "all the carnage" can upset a person so much that she would end up walking around the street with a loaded gun not knowing what to do but feeling desperate; sounded like something she really did one day ("darkness into darkness/all the carnage of my journey/makes it harder to be living"). But without the explanation, the song would have made no sense.
I saw them play this live and Amy explained the song during an instrumental break. It was amazing because it was the first time the song made any sense to me. The chicken man was an old guy selling stuff on the side of the highway. I remember she started her explanation by saying that, when they were first touring, she was driving around in a beat up VW(?) and she was saddened seeing so many dead animals (roadkill: "median" cat(?), dead deer, prairie dogs, rabbit). She said something about the woman who was beaten in Austin; again, another reflection from life on the road at the time, I think. She then said something about how "all the carnage" can upset a person so much that she would end up walking around the street with a loaded gun not knowing what to do but feeling desperate; sounded like something she really did one day ("darkness into darkness/all the carnage of my journey/makes it harder to be living"). But without the explanation, the song would have made no sense.