Waiting For A Hot Pocket

The final single before album release

Several years ago I was walking down Echo Park Avenue heading home from my local Walgreens. In my hand I held a bag of antipsychotics and a consumer grade kombucha (I have since given up both). At the time, much like today, I was fumbling my way through the LA music scene, which in the mid 2010’s very much revolved around an exciting and dangerous new genre of music called “Rock and Roll”.

I had been studying up on a hot young band called The Stooges. These youngsters from Ann Arbor seemed to really have their collective finger on the pulse of what the brash thirty-something teens in northeast Los Angeles were LARPing to at the time. So it was these “Stooges” that I had blasting through my earbuds as I slouched home on that hot, sticky day*, hoping that I could channel some of this fire into a song that would net me something as glorious as.. oh, I dunno… a first of three time slot at a 150 person venue on a Tuesday night the week of a major holiday, for example. A fella can dream, right?

On The Stooges second album “Fun House”, there is a song called “Dirt”. It’s a slow paced jam that centers around three descending chords that repeat over and over.

“OK”, I thought to myself, as I swigged from the ebullient bottle of mango habañero gingerade that promised eternal life. “Those three chords will be how I start the process of writing my next song when I get home.”

Well, the song that resulted from that session is out in the world today, and let me tell you, it sounds absolutely NOTHING like The Stooges. I’m not even totally sure what part of my song derived from the other, but I do know that my memory insists that it happened.

The point is, you can start a song with anything, but the song itself will always lead you to where it wants to go. In this case it lead me to the first song I wrote for what has become the second Butch Bastard LP, “Las Vegas Salvation”. The song is called “Waiting For A Hot Pocket”, and I am very proud to share it with you today.

This is the last “single” I will release until the full album drops (digitally, vinyl soon after) on April 28th. It is a song that I feel represents a big leap in whatever songwriting ability I possessed at the time. It is a song that found me when I was lost. It’s a song that inexplicably is inspired by The Stooges.

I try to get sleep as the bogeymen dance on the roof

I’m jaded and bored and a little bit long in the tooth

I feel out of place as I bury my face in the booth

I think I’ve got something but I don’t really have any proof

I’m trying to remember… I’m wondering if I ever felt this estranged in my youth…

Los Angeles makes a nice place to let go of the truth

Production note: This song became at least twice as good after enlisting Bill Patton to play pedal steel guitar. Bill is a Seattle legend and a tenth degree musical blackbelt that I am proud to know and have worked with. And Richard Gowen held it down on the drums for this one like only he can do. You all know Rich at this point as he is all over this record.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support. Don’t forget to get your vinyl preorders in!

Love,

Ian

* I honestly have no recollection of what the weather conditions were.