You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country.
At 9 o'clock this morning, Mission Control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia.
A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas.
The Columbia is lost.
There are no survivors.
That was President George W. Bush addressing the nation on February 1st, 2003.
A couple years later, John Roderick, singer and songwriter of the Long Winters,
recorded a song about the space shuttle Columbia on that day
as it broke apart while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
It's called The Commander Thinks Aloud.
This episode is made from an interview I did with John Roderick in front of a live audience in Seattle about how and why he made this song.
I am John Roderick.
I had my pilot's license when I was 17.
My dad was a small plane pilot.
And that was one of the ways that we bonded,
was in a small plane, trying to make it over a mountain range.
So I had a lot of experience in planes.