Saturday, January 10, 2015

12. Georgetown



When you're writing songs about a city, you have to explore.  There were a lot of possibilities: Beacon Hill, Shoreline, Kenmore, Blue Ridge, Lake City and the like.  But what can you say about any of them?  I had enough trouble writing about a place like Burien.  Seriously, it was difficult.  But Georgetown has this storied saloon/speakeasy tradition that I tried to highlight.  Also, it's pretty ugly.  In fact, it's almost blighted.  Plus, there's a freeway that runs over it.  And there are all these planes landing at nearby Boeing Field.

My friend Jim took me there and I quickly figured out how to approach the tune.  It needed to be gritty and noisy.  I play all three sax parts and Johnny my engineer handles the guitar solo.  I told him to play some crazy shit with minimal attention to the changes.  The result is a perfect wall of noise.  I listened to this tune recently after a long hiatus.  I was pretty surprised at what I was hearing.  It's got drive, but it's also kind of crazy.  I don't write like this anymore.  I think that for the sake of variety on this album, I was pushing my writing chops in various directions.  This is the result of that effort and I like it quite a bit.  

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