“Ellis was my grandfather, my father’s father, to be more precise. In some ways, I am writing the song through my own father’s eyes, trying to trace his own experience with his dad. My dad and I don’t get along all that well. He was a hard man to grow up with (“it takes pain to grow, don’t you know, don’t you know”), not someone you’d call exactly call a role model. I wanted to know what made him the way he was, why he had so much anger. When my grandfather died, my dad cried and acted like the world was half dead. I know for a fact that Ellis wasn’t kind to my father. So why was my dad in mourning? Blood is thicker than water, as they say (“The days are like blood, the nights are like wine”). We moved around a lot as a kid. My father was restless, and always running. Further and further away from his own family. The line, “What good is a man without a family, my son?” is my own imagining of what Ellis would say to my father as my dad kept putting more miles, more distance, between our extended family. It is also a reminder to me: Ellis is right. But what kind of family is he talking about? We can’t avoid blood (“I see his face sometimes, and it looks a lot like mine”). We can’t choose our parents. We can’t escape our past. But we can learn from it, and choose how we want our own families to be. His abuse doesn’t have to be mine, though “All of my children, they are carrying his name.” I don’t have children. In some ways, I am the child, and my children will carry his name. But they don’t have to carry the burden of Ellis’, nor my father’s, behavior.”