I usually pick weekday songs for the blog based on some sort of theme and rely on my Random Weekends to surface the odds and ends.
But occasionally I happen upon a song in my daily adventures and want to find a place for it on the blog. Such was the case with today’s SOTD, Josh Rouse’s ‘Jersey Clowns.’
Josh Rouse spent the year after Nashville‘s release in Spain, where he moved in with girlfriend Paz Suay. So the Nebraska boy who made his name in Nashville was suddenly a Spaniard.
His next release, 2006’s Subtitulo, reflected the move in its lyrics as well as, to some degree, its music. The album is predominantly made up of Rouse’s brand of smart acoustic pop but he introduced a few Latin flavors, including Suay’s charming vocals on one track.
I’m using this space today for a rant.
I had written a nice long post on a Josh Rouse song called ‘My Love Has Gone,’ which appears on his outstanding Nashville album. It’s one of my very favorite songs by anybody, and I gave it the royal treatment. But when I previewed the post I saw that the YouTube video was no longer valid due to a copyright infringement.
The same thing happened yesterday with my David Byrne post, forcing me to feature a video of him in a skirt — nobody needs that!
It’s weird to listen to an artist obsessively for a long time and never really know what he looks like. I own and adore all of Josh Rouse’s albums but I could’ve shared a cab with him and never known it.
So it’s odd to watch this live clip and discover that he looks like a cross between Kyle MacLachlan and k.d. lang as he plays in front of what looks like a display of children’s books. So much for our musical heroes being larger than life.
But that’s what’s cool about these live clips. They make it abundantly clear that these great musicians are just regular people plying their trade the way countless buskers have before them.
Meet Me In Montauk 