Drinking blues
The story
When we travel, meet new people, live new experiences... we are changed. And while we are the ones changing, it is the things around us that look different. That is what Drinking blues describes.
Feeling foreign in a familiar place.
Noticing the streets different, though they are the same.
Realizing the emptiness of a crowded city without those people that make it a home.
And when we reminisce about these places, streets, homes, we often find ourselves missing an idealized version of them. A past that, though familiar, is unknown, imagined. A past we never lived and yet wish it to continue in the present. Contrary to Aftoi me phi and Stolen words, Drinking blues has no point besides describing these feelings. Sometimes there's nothing better to do than stare out your window having a sip of the blues.
I came up with the riff of the introduction and the "sipping on sorrow and drinking blues" line when I was visiting Chicago in 2012. I'm not sure how the image of someone drinking sadness ("the blues"), but the amount of blues playing in every corner of that city probably had something to do with it. I somewhat forgot about that until late 2018, when I sat down to have a cigarrette looking out the kitchen window of my apartment in Philadelphia. I had just come back from vacations in Greece and "drinking blues" just made a lot of sense in the context of this song. Now to be fair, you'd have to put your head out of the window to actually see Spruce street from where I lived. But it rhymed, so...
This is the only track in Philathina that was recorded in my homestudio in Philadelphia. It was also the first song from that EP to be recorded back in 2020. While you can find an acoustic version of Aftoi me phi also from that time, it isn't part of the album. Compared to the first version (which you can find below marked as 'Master (August 15th, 2020)'), the one you can listen to in Philathina was remixed with new drum and brass sounds. But it is otherwise unchanged.
The lyrics
I traveled the world
Went round and round
But now I’m back home
To an empty town
With nothing but memories
From the good old days
Of sitting on porches
Drinking the night away
Familiar face
Now look so strange
Familiar places
How they have changed
Chorus
I look through my window
Staring down Spruce
Sipping on sorrow
And drinking blues
The same day goes by
Again and again
Stuck in a moment
That fades away
This cold moon reminds me
Of warmer nights
In these foreign places
That stole my heart
And so I light a cigarette
Just to get a taste
Of this unknown familiar past
I wish had stayed