I'm a huge phish fan and really loved the live studio recording of Round Room. Unfortunately, this song is lacking in terms of lyrical content, and not much to interpret. Perhaps the voice of the song was a coal miner or coal mine supervisor and Leigh Fordham sold him out to big business and they had 46 days to gather all they could. Leigh, having connections to this big business went down into the mines when the big business came to see if there was anything left. OR Leigh, being a cowardly sellout, went into temporary hiding because he/she (it's an ambiguous name) was neither a real friend of The Singer, who is now looking for Leigh to "repay" (him/her) for selling them out, and big business is just ravaging everything. But then, this sold out land has been discovered to be worthless. Leigh sees an opportunity to flee, and takes it. Meanwhile, the townspeople have hoarded the coal and gone into hiding. On the 47th day, big business leaves having found no spoils and the community comes out of hiding and shares with everyone. The coal came home.
I apoloogize for the meandering meanings of this song, I was just trying to think of what it meant off the top of my head...never gave it much thought before-hand because lots of Phish's songs are pretty superficial and just talk about things for the sake of making lyrics to throw on top of some kick ass music.
I'm a huge phish fan and really loved the live studio recording of Round Room. Unfortunately, this song is lacking in terms of lyrical content, and not much to interpret. Perhaps the voice of the song was a coal miner or coal mine supervisor and Leigh Fordham sold him out to big business and they had 46 days to gather all they could. Leigh, having connections to this big business went down into the mines when the big business came to see if there was anything left. OR Leigh, being a cowardly sellout, went into temporary hiding because he/she (it's an ambiguous name) was neither a real friend of The Singer, who is now looking for Leigh to "repay" (him/her) for selling them out, and big business is just ravaging everything. But then, this sold out land has been discovered to be worthless. Leigh sees an opportunity to flee, and takes it. Meanwhile, the townspeople have hoarded the coal and gone into hiding. On the 47th day, big business leaves having found no spoils and the community comes out of hiding and shares with everyone. The coal came home. I apoloogize for the meandering meanings of this song, I was just trying to think of what it meant off the top of my head...never gave it much thought before-hand because lots of Phish's songs are pretty superficial and just talk about things for the sake of making lyrics to throw on top of some kick ass music.