Songfacts®:

• American Aquarium is an alternative country band from North Carolina who broke through with the 2012 album Burn.Flicker.Die. Ten years later, the flames still haven't flickered out on Chicamacomico, which features the fiery track "Wildfire." In the song, an intense romance burns fast and bright, destroying everything in its wake like an out-of-control wildfire. But there's hope buried in the scourged earth. Frontman BJ Barham sings:
  
  And if there's one thing I've learned
  There's a part of death that's magic
  Destroying something to make way for something else to grow.
  
  He had to learn the lesson the hard way. The singer explained in a 2022 Songfacts Podcast interview: "I've had a few of these situations where you're in this thing and it's very short-lived, but it's extremely passionate while it's that thing. And both of you know, this can't last - it's too volatile. The reason it works now is the reason it can't work long term."
• Barham likened the blazing inferno to a kind of destructive love that "teaches you the definitions of unfathomable joy and catastrophic collapse at the same time." But the devastation brings cleansing that helps us grow back stronger.
  
  "A lot of the time fire is looked at as this destructive device, and this is a song where I wanted to use fire as a cleansing device, and not a destructive thing," he told Songfacts. "It's a cleansing fire, it's not a devastating fire. No one's losing life here. Nobody's losing the farm here. I'm not going to say a good fire, but I'm going to say a good fire."
• Barham explained how the song grew around the imagery of a staunch old tree that represents a close-minded guy who needs a spark of romance to open his eyes to new possibilities.
  
  "The chorus was the first thing I wrote, and then I wrote the first line and I realized like, okay, I love the imagery of painting this character as this hardened dude... comparing him to a tree," he said.
  
  "This old tree that is set in his ways, that is not moving, that does not or is not going to be a recipient to new ideas and has come to terms with just being the old single tree in the middle of the woods. And then having this one thing come along that changes his mind and he's willing to completely give it all up for. That's a powerful image for me. So it was really easy once I had what the story was."
• The album was produced by Brad Cook, who helmed the band's 2015 album, Wolves, and Barham's 2016 solo project, Rockingham.
• Most of the songs were written in North Carolina, but this track was penned in Tornillo, Texas, where the band cut the album at Sonic Ranch Recording Studio, which is located on a 1700 acre pecan farm that borders the Rio Grande and Mexico. Barham said of the facility: "It's desolate. It's vast. It's also one of the most inspiring places I've ever set foot in."