New single from Joe Grushecky And The Houserockers.
“We live a couple of blocks away from the neighborhood of Brookline in Pittsburgh in what is generally considered a safe area,” says Grushecky on the inception of the track. “Late last summer I saw the headlines of a shooting there on the local news. The first words out of my mouth were “That hits too close to home.” In the following days, it seemed the coverage of the incident was never ending. I began to think about how gun violence has become a powerful and disturbing presence here for all of us. This is one of those songs that wrote itself.
“Since we had just recently released Can’t Outrun A Memory, the time was not right for us to put out ‘Living In A Blues Song.’ I was spending some time in New Jersey with my good friend, Gordon Brown from William’s Honor. I shared a rough demo of the song with him, and he fashioned the track we used as a basis for the recording. The Houserockers put their stamp on it, and now we are sharing it with you.”
Joe Grushecky grew up in the coal mining town of Biddle, Pittsburgh, but everything changed after he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. He quickly picked up a guitar and set his sights on a future in rock ’n’ roll. By day, Joe worked as a special education teacher and by night he fronted the Iron City Houserockers. In 1979, the band was signed by Steve Popovich to his Cleveland International label, home to artists like Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, and Ronnie Spector.
From their debut Love’s So Tough to his most recent releases, both solo and with various Houserockers lineups, Joe has delivered hard-edged rock grounded in the grit and spirit of Pittsburgh’s steel town legacy. Along the way, his albums have featured collaborations with legends like Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople), Mick Ronson (David Bowie), Steve Van Zandt, Steve Cropper (Booker T. & the MG’s), and most notably, Bruce Springsteen.
The longstanding songwriting partnership between Springsteen and Grushecky began during the creation of Grushecky’s American Babylon, which featured co-written tracks such as “Dark and Bloody Ground” and “Homestead.” Their collaboration deepened in the summer of 1996, when Springsteen invited Grushecky to New Jersey to work on material for a project he was developing at the time. Together, they penned “I’m Not Sleeping” and “Idiot’s Delight,” with Grushecky primarily contributing lyrics and Springsteen composing the music.
Although that particular project was eventually shelved, Springsteen granted Grushecky permission to record the songs—along with additional co-writes “1945” and “Cheap Motel”—for Grushecky’s 1998 album Coming Home. Their creative partnership continued with subsequent sessions that produced Springsteen’s “Another Thin Line” and “Code Of Silence,” the latter earning a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance in 2004.
Now, decades later, “I’m Not Sleeping,” “Idiot’s Delight,” and “Another Thin Line” are receiving long-awaited recognition as featured tracks on Perfect World, the opening installment of Springsteen’s Tracks II: The Lost Albums box set.
Living In A Blues Song
