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This is a repost of the story behind the song “Day Drinking Days.” It’s a drinking-in-place tune about the early days of the Covid pandemic. The original version was “recorded in place” with me and my bandmates scattered about at home and released digitally in 2020. It’s now available in a newer version on the CD “Welcome Back: A Collection”.
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Sometimes all you have to do is pay attention, and a song opening drops into your lap. Awhile back I was on the air at KPIG Radio. A listener called in and said. “I have a traffic update for you”. This was in March. We’re all sheltered in place. There was NO traffic. He continued: “There’s a DUI checkpoint at the corner of ‘kitchen’ and ‘hallway'”.

It took me about half a beat, and then I got it. Cracked up. And. I announced it on the air, along with a drinking song, several times that afternoon. I then realized I had the beginning of a song.

Since we were all sheltered in place and playing by the rules then, heading up to the studio wasn’t an option. I figured this would be a good experiment. I had the title immediately: “Day Drinking Days”.

I cowrote it over Skype with my pal John Cirillo in Nashville. My local bandmate Greg Abelar added bass from his Aptos home. Dayan Kai added dobro from his home in Maui. Our guitar player Joe Bac added harmony, also from his home studio. Then Henry Chadwick, who’s been engineering our recent singles (see “No More Tequila For Santa” and “Monkey Town”), added percussion and mixed/mastered the track.

Under the banner of “not every song has to be profound,” the single dropped in June onto Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and all the usual streaming channels. A pretty fun, successful experiment. And we have another recorded-in-place project in the works now.