"It is lovely to be back.
I should say upfront that as Largehearted Boy has very generously invited me to submit Book Notes essays in the past, I find myself considering a slightly different tack with my new release The New York Stories.
I worked on this collection over a ten-year period, writing in binges as I worked on other things, and so some of what I was listening to when working on these stories has been covered previously on this site.
Another thing that is unique, is that these stories were less driven by specific musical inspirations than other work I've done. The rhythms and tenor of 99 Problems, You Can Make Him Like You, or Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine, speak to the musicians and the beats that spoke to me when I was working on those projects.
But what spoke to me on these stories was memory, and my associations with my hometown, the bars there, the neighborhoods I lived in, and the people I ran around with.
Further, the three collections within this collection are intended to loosely cross eras, the 80s, 90s and late aughts/2010 on respectively, and if not entirely riddled with time specific references, than certainly in the feeling of living in those eras, and the passage of time.
These Notes then are about the music I, or the characters themselves, would have been listening to during those time periods, which I guess means there will be some overlap after all. These stories may be fiction, but they are my fiction, and that doesn't mean we don't share some things in common.
One final note, these are songs that favor relationships, lost love, heartache, and confusion. They are also songs you hear in bars. All of which seems right for these stories, and most certainly appropriate."
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