A guide to the Oregon and Lane County references in Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Carrie & Lowell’

Early in his career, the singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens said he wanted to write an album for each of the 50 states in the U.S.

He later said he was joking, but he did put out “Michigan” in 2003 and “Illinois” in 2005. Fans consider his 2015 release, “Carrie & Lowell,” his undercover Oregon album.

Stevens name-checks Oregon places, people, history, flora and fauna in the album’s lyrics. He gives special attention to Eugene and Lane County, where Stevens spent some childhood summers with his mother, Carrie, and stepfather, Lowell. In fact, the album includes a song called “Eugene,” which includes the lines:

“What if I had never seen / hysterical light from Eugene?”

But “Carrie & Lowell” isn’t a travel guide. It’s an elegy.

Stevens wrote the album after Carrie died of stomach cancer. The Oregon summers were some of Stevens’ only memories of her. She suffered from depression, schizophrenia and alcoholism, and he abandoned the family when Stevens was just a year old. They reunited for summers, when he was between 5 and 8.

Stevens uses the language of Oregon, the flavor of those childhood summers, to try to understand her death.

Flora 

Stevens makes ghostly references to two trees — cedars and willows — in the opening song, “Death With Dignity,” which is itself a reference to an Oregon law.

He notes the “silhouette of the cedar” as he passes through a forest, and later tells Carrie that “Your apparition passes through me in the willows.”

Pears, as Oregon’s state fruit, get a mention on the song “Carrie & Lowell”: “Under the pear tree / Shadows and light conspiring.”

He also sings that “somewhere in the desert, there’s a forest,” a reference to vegetation in Oregon’s high desert regions.

It’s a metaphor for the emptiness of his mother’s death and the promise of something meaningful within.

Fauna

Stevens references three birds associated with Oregon: meadowlarks, chimney swifts and cedar waxwings.

The western meadowlark was considered the state bird of Oregon (and five other states) at the time the album was written. Vaux’s swifts roost in the chimney of Agate Hall on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene. Stevens calls upon those two birds as almost guardian figures.

“Chimney swift that finds me, be my keeper” — from “Death With Dignity“

“I slept on my back / In the shade of the meadowlark / Like a champion” — from “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross“

“Meadowlark, drive your arrow” — from “Carrie & Lowell“

The cedar waxwing is not a guardian. It is Carrie.

“Like the cedar waxwing, she was drunk all day” — from “Wallowa Lake Monster“

The cedar waxwing is known to eat fermented berries and become intoxicated.

Lane County references

Well-known Lane County landmarks abound, usually as locations Stevens reflects on positively when reminiscing:

“Found myself on Spencer’s Butte / Landscape changed my point of view” — from “All of Me Wants All of You“

(Stevens makes a tourist’s mistake, calls it “Spencer’s Butte” instead of “Spencer Butte.”)

“Covered bridge, I scream / Cottage Grove shade, invite me” — from “Carrie & Lowell“

The same song includes another reference to Cottage Grove that’s gone under the radar in the decade since the album’s release. 

“Carrie, come home (Thorazine’s friend) / Holding your hands with Opal” — from “Carrie & Lowell“

Fans have interpreted this to be about the gemstone — but the lyrics capitalize the word. That could make it a reference to Opal Whiteley, a Cottage Grove resident who became a literary sensation in the 1920s for her childhood diary and nature writing — and who has been called a fraud, a mystic and a “madwoman.” A reference to Whiteley would track with the album’s themes of mental illness and nature.

Florence’s Sea Lion Caves get a mention as well: “Signs and wonders: Sea lion caves in the dark” — from “The Only Thing”

References to Lane County run big and small. “Eugene” includes a nod to Emerald Park, where Stevens learned to swim: “Emerald Park, wonders never cease.” — from “Eugene”

One reference to a famed Lane County moment is on a song that was cut from the final album but was released later on an outtakes mixtape, “The Greatest Gift.” Florence’s exploding whale is the namesake for a song titled, well, “Exploding Whale.” (The whale is a layered metaphor for creative intention and failure.)

Other Oregon references

Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge region is referenced a few times on the album, noting a cantilever bridge, a punny reference to “the valley of The Dalles” and more specifically, on the song “Should Have Known Better”: “The past is still the past /The bridge to nowhere” and “The breakers in the bar / The neighbor’s greeting.”

That bridge to nowhere is likely the Astoria-Megler Bridge; the breakers in the bar reference the Columbia Bar at the mouth of the river, treacherous terrain for ships thanks to furious waves. 

The Tillamook Burn, a series of forest fires between 1933 to 1951, is mentioned in the song “Fourth of July,” as a reminder of how mortal something beautiful can be:

“Tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook Burn? / Or the Fourth of July? / We’re all gonna die.”

The city of Roseburg was founded by the (very bearded) pioneer Aaron Rose, allowing Stevens to also make a biblical pun in “Should Have Known Better”: “Rose of Aaron’s beard, where you can reach me.”

Portland gets some love, too, on the song “City of Roses,” also cut from “Carrie & Lowell” but included on “The Greatest Gift.”

Portland native, Oregon State alumnus and high-jump legend Dick Fosbury also gets a shoutout on “Exploding Whale,” which mentions his Fosbury flop technique in a call for people to follow their ambitions. 

Oregon legends

Stevens names songs after two different Oregon myths: the Lost Blue Bucket Mine and the Wallowa Lake Monster.

The final track on “Carrie & Lowell” is “Blue Bucket of Gold.” It uses the legend of the Lost Blue Bucket Mine, supposedly a lost mine discovered by a pioneer wagon train in the 1840s, where people pulled enough gold to fill a bucket. He uses it as a metaphor for a supportive connection that Stevens yearns for, but is unable to find.

“My blue bucket of gold / Friend, why don’t you love me?”

“Wallowa Lake Monster,” another song on “The Greatest Gift,” isn’t about “Wally,” the supposed Nessie-like cryptid that some believe lives in the lake. 

The “monster” is Carrie — or the mental illness and alcoholism that kept her estranged from her family. Stevens sings, after briefly setting up the myth of a “leviathan” in the depths:

“But have you heard the story of my mother’s fate? / She left us in Detroit in the rain with a pillowcase.”

Oregon culture

In a much lighter set of references on “The Hidden River of My Life,” a song on “The Greatest Gift” named for the Rogue River in southwestern Oregon, Stevens reels off his Oregon bona fides. He says he is a: 

After an album full of emotionally fraught metaphors related to our state, a simple list of ways he identifies with Oregon is a fitting end for this write-through. 

If you haven’t listened to “Carrie & Lowell,” I recommend you do. It’s one of my favorite albums, by one of my favorite artists. If you have listened to the album, please let me know if I missed something: annie@lookoutlocal.com. 

Tracklist

Songs on “Carrie & Lowell” and “The Greatest Gift” with local references.

* = Oregon reference  ! = Lane County reference

“Carrie & Lowell”

1. “Death with Dignity” *
2. “Should Have Known Better” *
3. “All of Me Wants All of You” !
4. “Drawn to the Blood”
5. “Eugene” !
6. “Fourth of July” *
7. “The Only Thing” !
8. “Carrie & Lowell” !*
9. “John My Beloved”
10. “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” *
11. “Blue Bucket of Gold” *

“The Greatest Gift” (outtakes from C&L)

• “Wallowa Lake Monster” *
• “City of Roses” *
• “Exploding Whale” *
• “The Hidden River of My Life” ! *

Illustrations by Annie Aguiar / Lookout Eugene-Springfield

This article has been updated to reflect the status of the meadowlark as Oregon’s state bird when “Carrie & Lowell” was released in 2015.