About the song:
“It's actually an old song, which I performed with my old band. We played the song everywhere. The first version was caught on tape in a coffeehouse in Stevens Point, Wisconsin in 1998. We played it to a packed auditorium at a NACA Showcase in Salt Lake City, Utah that year on our first tour. We played it at our first Whiskey a Go-Go show in Los Angeles, California. When we debuted it in our hometown at a Xmas party, people screamed. Eventually, it was one of 4 songs on our set when the old band won the Jim Beam National Rock Band Search in 2001. This song was played on national TV and even for some record label scouts who never signed the band. There are some recorded versions* already out there, yet I never felt like I got the performance or arrangement quite right. Finally, this new version is something I'm really proud of, capturing the vision of the song in this moment, with a dose of extra nostalgia all these years later. My son even plays a synthesizer on the track, which is such a fun and audible "icing on the cake."
It might have been my last year as a teenager. I remember sitting on the grass, behind the baseball field, in the park next to our apartment, "soaking the sun" on my hair, newly dyed blonde. Of course I liked a girl who was fun, who I wanted another "kiss or two" from, who I thought might be someone to "revolve around" long-term. Of course, on one hand I didn't know what I was trying to say to her...and on the other hand I had a lot to say. So I wrote that, and I wrote a scat out, syllable by sillyass syllable. It took some work! The love song is innocent enough, family friendly. In retrospect, it was a strange feeling to imagine - the feeling of being ‘old’ - at that age. The song lyrics certainly take on more of a tongue-in-cheek feeling today, at my age. Isn't it funny though...when people are young, many want to grow up so fast, and when they get older, many want to be young again. I admit, because of my dad's one-time vocation (monk), and his age when I was born (47), that sometimes, nowadays in my brain I have ‘a case of the Benjamin Buttons;’ that sometimes it feels like I was born a wise old man, and as I get older, the more I grow into a naive child." ~E