What about those other love songs? Romantic love always gets top billing, but how about a shout-out for those other people we love- our friends? You know, the ones who pick you up when you’re down. The ones who are happy to spend time with you and your significant other and then are happy to hear your sad stories when you get dumped by said significant other. I have had my share of bum luck, but I gotta say that I hit the jackpot with my friends.
When I found myself suddenly without a home to go back to in New York and without my girlfriend of several years, they were the ones who picked me up time and time again. When I needed a place to crash, they came through. When I needed to move my stuff into storage- there they were. When I began to build three rooms in a loft apartment, I had friends to lend a hand.
I started writing this when my friend Sam broke her leg. She was about to open a show. She was the star. She pulled it off because she was that good, but I knew that it wasn’t easy. There’s not much that I could do for her because, in all other respects, she had her shit together. So I thought I’d write her a song, but writing a song based on real life doesn’t always work for me. I often start with a very real moment or feeling, and then the song kind of has a mind of its own. I felt bad because I had told her that I was working on one for her, but I didn’t feel like this one was just about her. It was really about the importance of friends when you are at your lowest point, which meant that it was kind of about me.
It also didn’t really come right away. I was having a hard time finding the head space to write. I thought that I was losing my muse. I wasn’t often in my own space, which helps me write, because I was usually in someone else’s apartment. So, it didn’t get finished until I landed in Washington Heights. A lot of these songs were finished there.