It Happened to You: Bob Wire’s Latest, “Missoula Hurricane”

It probably won't become a million seller and a big hit on TikTok. But if you want to remember what it was like to go through Missoula's severe thunderstorm "parody laureate" Bob Wire has probably penned an instant classic.

Whether you ran out of power, or ice, or just couldn't get your phone charged, there's bound to be something in the 4-minute tale that happened to you during the July 24th storm.

It sure did to Bob.

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A song in the making

"It happened during about the craziest corner of the summer in my personal life," Bob told me on Daybreak with Dennis. "We had my son and his girlfriend visiting from Chicago and right in the middle of that visit is when the storm hit. So we were all hunkered down here at home in the hills on the south end of town, watching across the valley. The lightning strikes and the, would have to be power transformers exploding. It was like everybody else in Missoula, it just it was surreal to us."

The next morning on a coffee run, he had the mind to buy ice. Good thing, because his power was out for 3-days.

"It's 7:00 in the morning, but I have a feeling we're going to need some ice. So I I grabbed 3 bags of ice by noon. There was no more ice anywhere. Well, that has to be your first verse." 

Bob says he decided to go forward with the song, once he learned there were no deaths of serious injuries. Just a lot of chaos.

"I don't want to increase anybody's pain," he tells me. "I will take a pass on writing a song about a certain thing, but this one was crying out."

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Is that Dylan, or Gordon Lightfoot?

I recognize the Bob Dylan vibe, although I'm also sensing a little "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in there.

"That's exactly it," Bob admits, saying he used the "Dylan template" from "Hurricane", but without going 22-verses.

I kid him that it wasn't that big of a storm, but he admits he originally had 16-verses there was so much going on.

It's a real song

Local fiddle standout Grace Decker provided the sweeping accompaniment, finishing her part in just 2-takes, and Bob agrees when I joke that's what made it a "real song."

But did he really swallow his gum in the middle of the storm?

"I'll come clean on that one Dennis," Bob confesses. "I just needed something to rhyme.

If you want to hear "Missoula Hurricane" for yourself, check it out on Bandcamp.com and search for "Bob Wire."

And leave a buck in the tip jar for your own copy. He's still trying to pay for that ice.