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Singled Out: Brian Dunne's I'm Gonna Die Down Here

03/29/2016
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Americana star Brian Dunne tells us the story behind his song "I'm Gonna Die Down Here" which comes from his brand new album "Songs From The Hive". Here is the story:

Hi there. I'm gonna talk for a second about a song I wrote called "I'm Gonna Die Down Here". I wrote "I'm Gonna Die Down Here" while I was thinking about a few things; the first one- that most any listener could tell just by checking out the first verse-- is Dylan's "The Basement Tapes". I won't get into details of my deep love of everything Dylan, but I will say my initial goal with this tune was to write a song that embodied everything I love about that era of his work; the looseness, the absurdism, the sarcasm, the underlying sense of bitterness. There's a tip of the cap with my references to "the easy chair" and the chord structure, so I start by saying, thank you Bob. I will continue to steal everything from you. Let me know if you want co-writing credit on anything.

More personally speaking; around the time I was working on this song, I was feeling the weight of my failing music career more heavily than usual. I had become relatively convinced that because my father had been a laborer, and his father a laborer, and so on, that I was fighting against natural evolution and that was why things weren't working out for me at that particular moment (I got over that; I'm onto new theories). But being a stubborn person, I knew I'd never hang it up, so I felt a bit like I was volunteering for my own death. And that was the genesis behind the "I'm Gonna Die Down Here" idea.

The rest came to me as a conversation that I wished I'd had with a few people I knew in New York; one of those fantasies you have of telling someone off that you never got to tell off. It felt good. It's definitely my crankiest song, but I had a lot of fun with it. It's a little bit political, but not in a way that necessarily feels hackneyed or even intentionally (though I suppose that's up to you to decide). But I really was feeling that way; "there are haves and there are have-nots and that's ok with me-- but don't get us two confused." That's sorta the fulcrum of the song.

I read somewhere once that in order to write about something you're feeling bad about, you have to feel good about feeling bad. It's a tricky idea, but that's what I was going for here. Something that captured the humor of being at the end of your rope. And that's what I was thinking about.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself here and learn more about the album right here!

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