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Inside Track Week: Keaton Simons


07/28/2008
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(antiMusic) One of our main goals here is turn people on to music and we've found that the best people to tell you about the music is the musicians themselves, so this week we are giving you the inside track on three promising up and coming artists. Today we feature Keaton Simons who tells us about the songs on his new album "Can You Hear Me," which echoes his varied influences ranging from Hendrix, Dylan, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell to Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Robert Johnson. Stylistically he is just as varied, immersed himself in all forms of music, from Rock to Jazz, Blues to Bluegrass. Here is Keaton to tell us about the songs on the album:

1. WITHOUT YOUR SKIN - I'm fascinated with dichotomy. One of my favorites is the global and possibly even universal connection between all things and the complete individuality and autonomy of all things. That's the grand answer. The more down to earth one is the connection between two people who are so close that one may actually feel "naked" without the other.

2. NOBODY KNOWS - I wrote this song with The Matrix (an amazingly talented and successful writing and production team). The song is basically about an affair I had many years ago. It sheds light on some of the less popular perspectives about infidelity. It also shows the tendency for people to think they know what's "really going on" in a situation that they may actually know very little about. This song doesn't condone cheating. It just realizes the entire reality of it.

3. TO ME - This is a relationship I was in where neither of us trusted each other. We'd been dancing with the idea of being together for years and never did because we knew each other's tendencies for infidelity. Eventually we had to just go for it and hope we made it out alive. Fortunately we did (barely) and learned a ton.

4. GOOD THINGS GET BETTER - Wrote this song with my friend John West in a hotel room at a NACA conference in PA. People are always looking and hoping for bad things to get better. Rarely do they open their eyes to the potential for something good to get even better. I also believe 100% that positive energy and focus creates positivity. The opposite is also true.

5. MISFITS - This is about my sister and I growing up. There were times when we really felt like it was just the two of us against the world. We have always had a very close relationship and these experiences helped shape us as people.

6. CURRENTLY - I wrote this song in college. Started late at night and finished with the sun rise. This is about love and the capacity for it. I have always loved everyone completely differently and without category.

7. BURCH MOG - This song is heavily inspired by my sister. I wrote it in under 5 minutes. Had been working on writing for a few hours with a friend in college. We finished our session and he went home. I wrote the song after he left and called him right away (before cell phones). I had to leave a message because he hadn't even gotten home yet.

8. JOSEPH - This song started as a poem I wrote on an airplane about my grandmother and her father (Joseph). I had wanted to turn it into a song for at least a year when I got together with my great friend Scott Bruzenak. He and I made it what it is today. We worked on it in my home studio and the first recording of it was done there with me playing all the instruments (including drums).

9. MAMA SONG - My mother and many people are addicted to cycles of abuse in their lives. In this case, my mom caught her husband in an intense affair and left him. Unfortunately she went back to him. This song is about the time between.

10. UNSTOPPABLE - I wrote this song at my manager Jared Levy's parents house in MD. We were on tour in the dead of winter and were essentially snowed in. Definitely one of the best places to get snowed in! Strangely, it had also recently snowed in Malibu CA which, as far as I know, had never happened before. It was very late the night before Valentine's Day and my girlfriend (at the time) was in LA. This song is about the anticipation of seeing the one you love and the strength of that reunion.

11. CAN YOU HEAR ME - I wrote this song with my girlfriend (at the time) Bethany Dwyer. This song is basically me making fun of myself for being an obnoxious cell phone user. At the same time it's a comment on our society. Somehow with ever-increasing communication people seem to listen to each other less and less.

Hearing is believing, you can preview several tracks from the album and hear why Keaton caught our ears, hopefully he'll catch your ears as well.
Check it out here



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