We hear about Jenny from someone who, maybe, knew her best, in “From the Nebraska Plant.”

Track: “From the Nebraska Plant”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

We’re back to someone else, now. In “From the Nebraska Plant” another narrator talks about Jenny and her fabled bike which is “somewhere in a wreckyard now.” This is our character from “Jenny,” her song, one of the holy songs, and we learn that they remember her still. Her bike is trashed, she is long gone, but she saved this one. She saved lots of them.

“It wasn’t in your nature // taking in the strays,” our narrator says, which may be true of Jenny but seems more likely to be their read on being special in a series of others, and they say “but you handed me your helmet // I clung to you for days.” The possibilities are myriad here, from a lover who didn’t know her general savior nature to a misguided one of many to someone who is exactly right and she just surprised herself by doing it over and over. The reality of Jenny isn’t important, despite the album about her, but the outsider view and the person who is “strong now,” well, that matters a lot.