After 25 years of investigative dead ends, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reporters Emma Kent and Chris Kieffer re-examined all the evidence and witness testimony from this open case that has haunted Tupelo for decades. As a reporter at that newspaper five years earlier, I’d similarly tried to reopen some of the investigation files to much less success. However, since I was intimately familiar with the case and Tupelo itself, the reporters asked me to create a sound to encompass the unfinished story.
While working on the music, a reluctantly plucked banjo was the obvious decision because of its eerie quality. But the train that runs through the center of town, not far from where Occhi disappeared, ran every hour the night I was trying to record. Mad, I threw my mic out the window and yelled at the train. The joke’s on me. The train made it in the song because it is such an integral part of the fabric of Tupelo.
