I moved to Hilton Head and I was playing outside of the Holiday Inn at the Tiki hut. The first place I started playing was a Mexican restaurant in Charleston called San Miguel's, it's not there anymore. It wasn't the first place, but it was in the very early days. Is that where you got your start?Ī: Absolutely. Q: I heard you played for the first time at a Wild Wing Cafe in Hilton Head, S.C. I've done that for so long, it's important to me to acknowledge someone else's talent. To have someone in my life that knows me as well as she does, it's almost not fair, because she'll write the song and I'll be like "you're killing me, stop writing my life." One of the things that I've learned, too, is that I don't have to write all of the songs. Some of the songs Maia wrote and brought to me, and they say what I've been meaning to say. What is the album focus and inspiration?Ī: I think it's a good snapshot of the last three years of my life. We just keep riding the ride and it seems to keep going. I've been very grateful, lucky and blessed all at once. I'm happy people refer to me as a musician and not the college drop-out that I am. I think as a songwriter, how people find out about you is how you will always be known. Q: How do you feel about being dubbed a romantic musician?Ī: I guess those are the two songs I'm most known for but I've also got songs out that are about darker subjects. it was one of those nice ones that happened in like 20 minutes. She had a melody, and I had the idea for the song. I got with my writing partner, Maia, and it kind of popped out. We knew it was a girl, so there was a lot of a dual moments that crept into my thinking. I started trying to put my head around that moment, but at the same time my wife was pregnant with our third child, Tiller. But songwriter Mark Addison couldn't help but imagine himself in their place.A: The genesis of the song a friend of mine's daughter was getting married, and he called me and asked me if I would write him a song for his daughter for the wedding. Many in the city don't recognize the signs of homeless people hidden nearby others have grown accustomed to their presence. They might be Vietnam vets, failed screenwriters, mentally ill, drug-addicted, or just out of luck. The homeless are all ages - young runaways, young families with children, the elderly. all considerably cheaper than the median California home price of half a million dollars. They sleep under stairways, in bushes, under bridges, in tents on riverbeds, in caves, basements, tree houses, crawlspaces, parked cars, garages. Los Angeles is no exception, with an estimated 73,000 homeless on any given night. In any economic center, there's bound to be a wide gap between the haves and the have-nots as local economy drives up real estate prices. A sleeping hobo's feet poke out from behind a dumpster. A high-powered businesswoman steps over an unconscious drunk on the sidewalk. Nonetheless, many traveling entertainers and tourists have noticed the jarring contrast of drug addicts, homeless, and gang members juxtaposed with pristine skyscrapers and Giorgio Armani suits. Given all this, it seems as though the streets would be arteries pumping solid gold through the city. is the third largest economic center in the world. It's also home to seven Fortune 500 companies (as of 2011). Photo: Ron Reiring, via Flickr, CC 2.0Los Angeles, The Entertainment Capital of the World, has a long history of cranking out mass diversions for massive profits. First time I've had a title track!" ~ Songwriter Mark AddisonĪ homeless encampment outside City Hall in Los Angeles I am equally jazzed that Maia Sharp turned Edwin McCain onto the song. Maia Sharp sang with me on the demo and the studio version.Ī year or so later, I was lucky enough to be in the good graces of my friend Brendan Okrent at ASCAP when Joan Baez was looking for a final song for an album, and gratified when she chose 'Mercy Bound.' I joined her tour for a day or two and found myself onstage with her at the Newport Folk Festival that year, which was a blast. That song was the cornerstone of The Borrowers' only album, although it wasn't much like the rest of the record. I think I borrowed the opening melody from a Joan Jett song - can't remember which one. And the runaways, the homeless were so much a part of the scenery. It changed the way I looked at life forever. The distance between the super rich and the unbelievably poor was never so obviously wide, even though they lived within blocks of each other. I was struck by how rich and poor lived almost side by side. "I wrote Mercy Bound soon after I moved to LA.
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