This song is another favorite of mine. I know, I know, you can't say that every time you post a song or it starts to lose its meaning – but really, this one has mountains of history for me.
During my second tour in Iraq, my dad sent me letters with encoded musical messages, using the Nashville numbers system to send me melodic passages (as opposed to sending notes or fretboard positions) – and my job was to decode them with my guitar and write back telling him what song I think it goes to. During this time, he randomly sent me a CD. It was Out of State Plates, by Fountains of Wayne.
When I first saw it I thought, what is this?? I read the letter that he’d sent with it, and apparently it was just some band he’d heard and thought I might like/draw inspiration from them. Man, just gotta say, I freakin’ love that guy. My dad is a real hero, and he’s probably got no idea that I feel that way or that I love him as much as I do, but I do. Anyway, listening to this album there were many songs I liked, but I was instantly connected with their cover of These Days, by Jackson Browne. I remember just falling into that walking chord progression, thinking it sounded magnificent and impossible, and I guess maybe like it was written to carry words of great significance. I spent the rest of that year trying to figure it out.
Naturally, I did eventually figure it out, and honestly once I did, it wasn’t as complicated as I thought it sounded at the time, but that doesn’t change the way that I feel about the song. My wife always says she likes when I play this song because she thinks I connect well with the lyrics - like if you didn’t know better you could think I wrote it – and I think this performance really captured the essence of what my wife sees…that’s why I chose to use this recording as my submission for HMF Week 51 Round 3, it just felt right.
Thank you for watching!
▶️ 3Speak