“Know You Rider†is about as trad as you can get. It’s been done innumerable ways by a host of artists with varying lyrics. Its origins are shrouded in mystery. But it’s always been about “(I) know you rider, gonna miss me when I’m gone.†In high school I played the…
“Travelin’†is the instrumental that follows “Travelin’ Man†as an instrumental journey to follow in the footsteps of the its counterpart. In its incarnation as a featured song of the Montreal band Harlequin in the mid-1970s “Travelin’ Man†was always followed by this roughly five-minute instrumental. Now it’s part of…
I wrote “Travelin’ Man†in the mid-1970’s for the band Harlequin, which I co-founded with violinist Joel Zifkin while we were students at McGill University. It was a mainstay in the band’s repertoire during the mid-period of the band’s lineup. “Travelin’ Man†segued into an unnamed instrumental written by Joel…
“Lucky’s Café” is a barroom lament about looking for love in all the wrong places.
“The Illustrated Man†was written across decades. I think I wrote the lyrics in the late 70s. At the time I tried repeatedly to write the music for it but nothing clicked, so I just set it aside, neatly typed, for nearly 30 years. Finally, in the early-aughts, it came…
True crime, outlaws and antiheroes. You can’t get much more American than that. Some of my songs arrive in the form of a first-person narrative by an unexpected character. An outlaw or antihero works for me. I like the grittiness of Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road.†I like a TV series…
