Up From the Bottom

I decided I should do these “song stories.” Just short little explanations of why I wrote a particular song, or what it’s really about. I’ll start with “Up From the Bottom,” the first track from my album Don’t Look Back, which you can listen to on Spotify or Apple or YouTube or wherever else.

My favorite band in my youth was Oasis. They were not as huge in the US as they were in their native UK, but they were superstars. Fronted by brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, Liam was the lead singer, and Noel was the songwriter, lead guitar player, and sometimes lead singer. They broke up in 2009. Both went on to have solo careers, and I was a much bigger fan of Noel than Liam because I learned to play lead guitar by copying Noel, and he was (is) just a brilliant songwriter. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.

One day, after he released a new album, his US concert tour started in Washington, at White River amphitheater, so I paid a little more attention. He was interviewed afterward and complaining about how most of the crowd just stood around and didn’t know the new songs. Indeed, when Oasis was big, we would all know the new songs immediately and sing them at the top of our lungs at concerts even if the album came out last week. I thought, wow, this is Noel hitting rock bottom. His rock bottom isn’t not being able to pay the bills, or getting fired, it’s fading away into obscurity. A different world for sure. So I wrote a song.