Everybody Knows – MP3

Sometimes songs come easily.

I woke up from an afternoon nap around two o’clock (late night at Alphabet Lounge) with a dog eared copy of Ben Fong Torres’ Gram Parson biography, “Hickory Wind,” at my side, and heard a melody with the line “If you’re goin’ back to L.A., tell my father I said hello” in my head.

An hour later, I had this.

Songs like these come kinda’ quickly as the form sorta presents itself.  “Radio,” for example, has verses that begin with “morning,” “afternoon,” and “nightfall.”  Easy to write, and easy to remember.  This one has “father,” “mother,” and “brother.”  Imagine it with a pedal steel, and you begin to get the idea.

If you every wondered whether my stint with the classic country cover band, The Smith Family, had an influence, well, here’s your answer.  And if you ever wondered why I keep writing about leaving small towns and selling out, well, everybody knows I’m the man who sold his soul.

[audio:everybodyknows.mp3]