In the Neighbourhood

Good Morning!
Good Morning!

It can be a struggle to use regular words and sentences to try to explain the story behind a song and it's especially hard this time. In the Neighbourhood is the portrait of a little intersection (Locke and Charlton for those who might know) where I often sit outside or inside and drink coffee and look and wonder.  I can't tell you how much time my mind has spent looking closely at memories, turning phrases, and processing sounds but I can tell you that I wrote the poem and heard the little melody that started this song inside the Donut Monster coffee shop in the fall of 2024. Over the following 16 months I played piano, changed the key, rehearsed the band, revised the lyrics, recorded the band (live off the floor), did a field recording of neighbourhood sounds on a school day morning in May 2025, got percussion from Adam in New Orleans, arranged back-up vocals and recorded them, re-arranged back-up vocals with new lyrics and additional singers, thought about revising the lyrics, re-recorded the main vocal (all except for the very first line . . . ) and listened to three stages of mixes (thanks Sean) before deciding it was done and ready for release.  All that: time; effort; intent; to make the right home for a small poem about one very specific place on one particular morning - this morning.
As I type, my son leaves the front door with his friends to walk up Herkimer to Locke where he'll turn left, walk up to Donut Monster and wait for the crossing guard's whistle while the life and sounds of the neighbourhood surround him.