Many of you have written and asked what Radio Fade is about, citing the references to many of my heroes whose songs are background muse for my song. Well, simply put....I was saddened and struck by the quick demise of Warren Zevon, and while still mourning that loss (though I never met Warren), the deaths of Johnny Cash, Townes Van Zandt and Rick Danko (of the band) coming so soon served to settle me into a combination of melancholia and sadness for what's passing out of the world. I heard all these guys for the first time on radio stations like WMMR and WXPN in Philly in the 70's, KUT in Austin and WXRT Chicago in the 80's. I was driving along listening to 'outlaw country' on my new Sirius satellite radio system and the lyrics to Radio Fade just started coming to me. I thought of when I was younger and heard that Lowell George had died. I was perfoming his song 'Willin' almost nightly at the time, and I was saddened by that loss. But I recognized that this loss was different. At 49 yrs of age, my own mortality was much more present; and the passing of these four icons of my own 'dirty life and times' was accompanied by a shiver at the recognition of my own finality.
I played the song for Marc Edelstein, a great bassist in the Chicago area, and he remarked: "Radio Fade is your American Pie". I hadn't thought of that, but clearly Don McLean's sense of loss about Buddy Holly was a sibling of my own grief. I've had a slice of real American Pie now. Radio IS fading. Long live the American songs it brought us.