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SIOUX CITY | Looking through an old notebook, Mike Langley recited lyrics to a song he had written.

"Lovers' lane, lovers' lane, take a dead end road up lovers' lane/Who'll complain but the wind and the rain/I can almost the music playin' on lovers' lane."

Spooky stuff, right?

Well, that's exactly the way Langley, a veteran Sioux City-based singer-songwriter, likes it.

"There's a long tradition of writing songs about life, death and the hereafter," the 2012 Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Music Association (IRRMA) Hall of Fame inductee explained. "It's fun to imagine what the unknown is like and it gives license for writers to be as creative as they can be."

More than a decade ago, Langley formed a musical group called the Groovediggers with Bob Larson, Jamie Bowers and Walt Peterson, who just happens to be the caretaker for a Sioux City cemetery.

"I don't know if it was my idea or Mike's idea to start singing about death, dying and spirituality," Peterson, a singer who also plays the mandolin and harmonica, said. "But The Groovediggers have never run out of material, that's for sure."

It helps that Langley is especially prolific in writing songs with otherworldly themes.