The Retrographer, Issue 104 ("Gas Station Bathroom")

August 08, 2023

Announcing “Gas Station Bathroom”, the second single from my forthcoming album “Country Life in America”

The Retrographer, Issue 104 (July, 2 0 2 3)

Bulletins:

The story of “Gas Station Bathroom”

I’m so excited today to announce the second single from “Country Life in America”. It’s called “Gas Station Bathroom”. Listen to it now.

My dad left me his busted old 97 CR-V when he died and I drove it until pieces started falling out of the bottom of the car onto the highway. Changing the tape deck to a CD player was the only upgrade he’d made to the car during his administration (not, for example, repairing the air conditioning). By the time I’d gotten it, the world had moved to smartphones so I loaded it up with the albums I’d bought in my adolescence: Canon from the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list, old Tower Records scores, gifts from family who understood what I liked. I tattooed those albums on the back of my brain on many long rides.

But some rides were too long. In 2015 I was driving home from my family’s annual summer vacation in Maine, seven and a half hours depending on how things go. At a certain point, I couldn’t listen to Rejuvenation or Aja again, so I started singing to myself instead, yowling with the windows open on the highway. Maybe it was the very large iced coffee, the stultification of the interstate highway system, or the August heat making my brain unglue, but what I sang sounded kind of good. I recorded what I had into my phone - something about a journey without a destination, a reflection that won’t stand still, a payout without a payoff - and put in another CD.

That’s what this stage of growing up often felt like for me. The world I had come from and taken for granted was gone, and I had to seek a new one. Looking back on it now, I can see that I was driving home, but I didn’t know if home was still there. Without knowing where to find terra firma, I was unmoored, untethered, lost, but always moving. I love the performances on this song, and particularly relish the way Andrew Daly Frank’s wistful, winding guitar licks lead into the song’s solo section.

If you haven’t already, please pre-order the physical LP of “Country Life in America” right here, and check out my first single “Talkin’ French” too.Crochet by Joey Schwartzman

CATCH UP ON BACK ISSUES AT TINYLETTER

MONTHLY

#104 July, 2023 | “Gas Station Bathroom”

#102 May, 2023 | 

#101 April, 2023 | 

ANNUAL

DECENNIAL

THEMED