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Musician Rick Rockz wrote a song about a car found buried in an Atherton yard in 2022, a story that was broken by The Almanac. Courtesy Rick Rockz.
Political headlines tend to offer fertile ground for musical parodies, from “SNL” to Randy Rainbow, but few other news stories get commemorated in any kind of song, humorous or otherwise.
But then most other stories don’t have the mystery and overall strangeness that inspired the song “Car in My Yard.” After all, it’s not every day that homeowners unearth a Mercedes Benz convertible buried, complete with bags of cement inside, in their yard.
When Angela Swartz, now editor at The Almanac, this publication’s sister paper under parent nonprofit Embarcadero Media Foundation, broke the story of a car found buried in the yard of an Atherton residence in October 2022, the bizarre discovery made the national news. That’s where it caught the imagination of a musician who goes by the stage name Rick Rockz, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago.
“It was on the news that day when it broke. This was on Oct. 20, 2022, and I saw it on the news, and I was just totally enraptured by the story about this car buried in the yard. It had this mysterious true crime element to the case — it kind of fascinated me and consumed my thoughts in the coming days,” Rockz said in an interview with this publication.
The unusual story led Rockz to write lyrics for an existing melody he’d been working on, he said. The foundation of “Car in My Yard” is an ambling, minor-key guitar riff that conveys mystery but could also play as slightly sinister — fitting for a news story that took several twists, including an investigation into the suspected criminal activities of Johnny Bocktune Lew, the deceased former homeowner who is thought to have buried the vehicle.
“I’d already come up with the music for this song, but I didn’t have any lyrics. So then the story came up, and it just totally consumed me. And then the next day, I was playing this little guitar riff I had come up with and I thought, ‘you need to write a song about this,'” Rockz said.
The lyrics, which tell the story from the point of view of the surprised homeowners, have a tongue-in-cheek quality. The song recounts the car’s initial discovery as the residents embarked on a landscaping project and the subsequent investigation.
Some of the lyrics include:
“There’s a crew of landscapers here/With big machines and they’re here to dig/They dig a hole and the work begins/When someone said — did he say that?/There’s a car in my yard/Mr. Lew/what did you do/in my yard.”
“Car in My Yard” is the title track of a four-song EP, which Rockz released this summer. He is a professional recording engineer, and the album, which he worked on in his spare time, took a while for him to complete, he said.
Rockz also made a short documentary about the news story and his song, which he’s posted on his YouTube channel, where listeners can also find a music video for “Car in My Yard.” He created the documentary to highlight the unusual circumstances behind the song.
“It was just a very different song from what I normally write. (I thought) it would really fascinate people with this true crime element to hear the story of what the song is about,” he said of the short documentary.
Rockz, who has released two full-length albums and several other EPs and singles, draws on a variety of inspirations for his songwriting, including personal experience and current events — one song from 2020 is called “Stay Home (Coronavirus Song)” and he also has a holiday single called “Santa Claus Is on His Way.” His music is available on his website.
“A lot of times there’ll be maybe a love song, or something that just kind of got me mad, or some sort of political thing. Something in politics might get me upset, and I’ll write something, or (I’ll write about) things in my personal life,” he said.
Rockz did write another song taken from the news, an unhoused man he saw interviewed who was lamenting how drug use had cost him his family and job, but he said that the Atherton car in the yard story was an unusual source for him. He also credited Swartz’s reporting in spurring him to write the song. Swartz was a reporter for the publication at the time she wrote the story.
“As far as I was concerned, hers was the most definitive and detailed investigative coverage about this case. Every day I was getting up and I was reading her stories about this, because it was fascinating. I think all the other news stories, they got the general flavor of the story, but nobody got into as much detail as Angela did,” he said.
A local news story is actually not the only way that the Peninsula has influenced Rockz’ work. He counts Fleetwood Mac among his favorite bands and musical inspirations. As he noted, the area was an early home to band members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, who attended Menlo-Atherton High School.
Rockz doesn’t know whether the owners of the Atherton home that had the car in the yard have heard his song. He hasn’t played it for a live audience, but Rockz has played it for a few people and “they’ve been very fascinated by the story,” he said.
The “Car in My Yard” EP is available for download or streaming on Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube and Pandora. For more information, visit rickrockz.com.
