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, your way.

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's 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

Has 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

But John jacket son I feel we're being born

I am John Roderick I had my pilot's license when I was 17 my dad was a small plane pilot

And that was the way my dad was one of the ways that we bonded was in a small plane

You know trying to make it over a mountain range. So I had a lot of experience in planes

I always love to fly and when the nose comes off the ground. I always

Feel a charge. I didn't want to be a person that was anxious about flying

Well at that point in 2005 I guess we were still pretty close to 9-11

And the space shuttle disaster

Followed pretty close on the hills

But also there were all those smaller disaster crashes the Alaska Airlines

Crash that happened off the coast of California where they lost their vertical stabilizer the jack screw one

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