Spain Songs: Mysterious Man

Wanderlust and Dre'like beats!

Poppy Blake

This week I’m showcasing one of my personal faves, Mysterious Man.  This is one of the first tunes I wrote in Spain.  It was written before we had accomplished anything. We hadn’t gotten an apartment or found work.  We knew no one except an old teacher of my that, after promising to help us find work, was very unavailable.  It was a time of  near desperation.  We felt like proverbial monkeys jumping from one branch into nothing.

Mysterious Man’s lyrics were written near the Museo Prado in Madrid.  There’s some very charming tree-lined avenues in that city that Linds and I liked a lot.  I remember starting to write the lyrics, they sounded so conventional at first.  But I just kept writing.  I just wanted to finish a song.  See, before this trip and the fountain of inspiration that accompanied it, I hadn’t written anything that I was terribly proud of in about 3 years.

Luke warm about this tune, I continued anyway.  The song evolved lyrically, ending up as an admission of wanderlust.  I remember before the trip talking to my Dad who urged us against our ‘05 adventure, citing jobs and no insurance as reasons not to leave.  Those words resonated in me, “No insurance,” and of course now adorn the chorus of Mysterious Man.

When music and synth were put to the song later, I was really able to flesh out its campfire feel in some parts of the song.  The ethereal reverb is nice.  I really like the way it turned out.

Linds and I lived in Spain during the summer of 2005 working as English tutors and general conversationalists (yes, you can get paid for that). During that time, I personally grew leaps and bounds as a songwriter. You can read all about my artistic journey and influences in my Reflections of an Artistic Slacker post. In our humble Madrid apartment living with 2 other American travelers, I wrote a series of 7 songs that I’m really proud of. I’d like to share them with you.

Let me know what you think!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 3:00 am and is filed under Blakesjourney, Travel Tunes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.