Shameless self-promotion time! Before “Goodbye Spain”, I had always written songs with my own lyrics. It’s not that I wasn’t open to writing songs with other lyrics but the thought never occured to me. Then one day, I came across my good old friend Sam West’s blog, which he used to post his own poetry and lyrics every once in a while, and that was where I read lyrics of his called “Goodbye Spain”. The words spoke of a longing to get out of a smalltown, and though Vancouver isn’t a smalltown by any means, I could still relate to the lonely, outsider feeling of the poem’s tone. In fact, I was so impressed and liked the lyrics so much that I asked Sam if I could write a song with them and once I was given the OK, I got to work on them. First collaboration! Woot!
For a while, I couldn’t come up with much. Most of the time when I write, I’ll either have the music for the verse or the chorus down, but not for both, and I usually just get frustrated. With “Goodbye Spain”, it was the same thing: I had music for the verses all set but nothing really came to mind for a chorus. Eventually, I somehow managed to crank something out, and the next thing I knew, I was singing the song walking down the street, thinking to myself, “Damn! That’s actually a pretty awesome song.” (rather than, “Damn! I must seem like a crazy person right now, singing in public about highway A1A.”
I don’t have a studio version recording of the track yet, but I’ve performed it a bunch of times in live and this is my favourite performance. Enjoy!
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