Exclusive Download: The Mekons' Woozy, Unpredictable 'Geeshie'

Mekons

Francesca Allen

Click to listen to The Mekons' 'Geeshie'

"Geeshie," a woozy number from the Mekons' latest album Ancient and Modern,  was inspired by an obscure song recorded by 1930s blues singer Geeshie Wiley. "When [Wilco frontman] Jeff Tweedy came on my WXRT radio show the Eclectic Company a few years ago, he brought along a track I'd never heard by Geeshie Wiley called 'Last Kind Words,'" says guitarist Jon Langford. "I played it to Lu Edmonds, and we spent a long time trying to predict when she was going to change chords, then gave up and wrote 'Geeshie,' which, while retaining the original groove, changes chords in even less likely places."

Ancient and Modern will hit stores on September 27th, but you can stream or download the song for free now.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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