It's Friday, I'm...on time?
My introduction to this week's tune came from a commercial for Toyota's Sequoia, which probably drops my coolness quotient another notch or two. Ah, well--old enough now that it doesn't much matter....
I wrote about Pete Droge in Vol. CDXVIII, and as there's nothing new in his career, I'll leave his bio at that write-up. I would like to note, though, that I am somewhat surprised to be featuring a second song by an artist whose career could be called middling at best, though a middling career as a musician beats most other professions by quite a bit. I'd also like to pass along that because of that bio I took a chance and gave a listen to his debut album (that'd been sitting in my CD collection gathering dust since whenever I grabbed the promo copy that was sent my way in my Camelot Music days), Necktie Second, and thoroughly enjoyed it, listening to it for a good couple of months. Half-assed research pays off!
Fun Fact: One thing I did learn this time in my half-assed research was that Droge's career got a huge boost from his friendship with Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for a little band you might have heard of: Pearl Jam. Friends in high places and all that....
"Going Whichever Way the Wind Blows" appeared on Droge's fifth solo album, the rather swimmingly entitled Under the Waves. Near as I can tell from the rather sparse references I found, the song was not released as a single and the album, which was released on Droge's own label, did not chart. And if you read the album review under the AllMusic reference above, you'd probably not listen to Droge at all....
While Droge is often compared to either Tom Petty or Neil Young (kind of hear Petty, you got me on Young), I thought this week's tune had more of a Simon and Garfunkel vibe to it. It's definitely a whimsical tune, the major theme being to not let life get in the way and just enjoy the ride (plenty of imagery related to driving a car, too). Truth be told, I'm pretty much at that point in my life so the song may have a bit more significance (if any song can have significance to the real world) to me than others. Droge's vocals capture the carefree simplicity of the lyrics, both of which are buffered by some fine acoustic guitar (can't ever get enough of acoustic guitars). "Going Whichever Way the Wind Blows" is a short and sweet folk tune, performed by a troubadour, signifying that contentment is yours for the taking....
Lyric Sheet: "Going whichever way the wind blows/Staring through the windshield/Seeing the other side/Let it go, it will get easier/Let it go, just enjoy the ride..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
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