Footwear: Burgundy Shoes

Patty Griffin: Burgundy Shoes

[purchase]

The hot weather has finally hit SoCal - I find myself unable to sleep and writing a post about Patty Griffin. In Burgundy Shoes, she sings about her mom - since I'm in the throes of heat prostration, I'll let her describe it:

"'Burgundy Shoes' was really trying to find a moment in my memory that I could really feel joy in and I went back to one of my earliest memories of waiting for the bus in the town that I grew up in. It was a big, exciting trip to the big city that was Bangor, Maine with my mom on a really beautiful spring day. When you grow up in the Northeast, you have to wear big boots for the whole winter and then suddenly your mom says it's OK to take your boots off and you feel like you're walking on air 'cause your feet are in these shoes. And they’re pretty shoes, not ugly boots. It was just that simple moment - having that time with my mom and thinking about I used to think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. When you start digging back into being really little, you find all these memories that are very pure and aren't crowded by anxiety or anything like that. I was trying to write that song from the point of view of who I was then." - Patty Griffin

From NPR: "Griffin's songs are often shot through with a big streak of melancholy — so much so that a friend challenged her to write a 'happier song.' That challenge resulted in 'Burgundy Shoes,' a song on her new CD." Hear all about it in the interview.

I know "advice" was last weeks theme, but let me tell you, if someone gives you a free air conditioner in November, for god's sake, put it in before a high pressure system parks itself over your burgh and you find yourself posting to the Internet at 2 ayem. I think my next move is mixing up some saline solution. Damn you, global warming!