Song of the Day

If you grew up in the US you’ve heard Johnny Cash songs hundreds of times without even trying. This song by LA native Robert Francis, along with perhaps all of his songs are one giant drawn out montage of reminiscing about young love that’s been lost or drunken bar counter memories that are always just out of reach. It’s like daydreaming while driving down some dusty Southwestern highway and remembering the love of your life and how you lost your chance, yet are content to just have the beauty of the memory in your mind and never really truly find out if you could have been happy if you had ended up with the person. The song sounds sad and lonely, but shows a deep appreciation for love and a weathered heart still hoping for love. It’s the kind of music a guy would write if he was a hopeless romantic and wishing that the girl of his dreams will just happen to be in the bar he’s playing at in Ottawa, Ontario next month, October 5th to be exact. And yet, even if she approaches him, the musician’s life on the road and the success of the music would make him reject her and continue on his self-fulfilling spiral of heartache and lonesomeness, fueling his lonely song writing and making the songs more and more true with each show.

I really like the music, this song in particular catches me with the long woooo-ooo-wooooos and brawny guys in rural midwestern getting in fights over a girl. The video says, although the aggressive guy gets the girl and kicks your ass, as long as you come back to her house after it’s all said and done she’ll be there at the door waiting for you with open arms in the rain. But in reality, at that young age, she probably doesn’t have the presence of mind to know that you’re better for her than the macho guy and meekly allows the aggressive scumbag to keep her under his thumb. That is until you all go off to college, or just move to the sort-of larger town in the same state and get a job doing something that you never expected to, make new friends, and forget about each other. But later find each other on Facebook, yet never really take make the leap to visit each other because one of you always happens to be in a relationship with someone else. And… ahhh…. Reality creeps in.

But maybe they made the music video because they saw the irony in it all and wanted to show people what could really happen if you could only just go back in time and change it all! Ah, yes, thanks for nothing Robert Francis.

Anyway, I do like this guy’s music, you’ve gotta also listen to his song Darkness, but make sure you until the song really gets rolling about one minute in. And also check out his song Nightfall

More Robert Francis at his website, MySpace, Last.fm, Facebook, Atlantic Records, Wikipedia.