Some words about the song:

The author of this description (Kenny) began writing this song while on a weekend trip to Washington, D.C. Years earlier I had attended a university there, where I would meet future Coral Gable Pat Brennan. This time I was in town to celebrate a different friend's graduation from law school. I was an underemployed freelancer and had been spending much time wondering what my efforts would lead to, if they would lead to anything at all, if there even was anything I could contribute to the world. It was in this condition that, alone, I wandered the streets of D.C., once familiar to me, with a melody in my head, some lines rattling around, and the weight of the past pressing down. A heavy load indeed.

The rhyme and meter were lifted from the Bob Dylan song "Mississippi." which has been stuck in my head ever since I first heard it and still has not left. Some of the lines explicitly reference lines in "Mississippi," too ("Time's piling up" and "Everybody moving"). One line ("You can always come back / But you can't come back all the way") seemed to speak directly to what I was experiencing as I walked the streets. There's a hypnotic, declarative quality to the meter that made it easy to come up with new lines for, so I ran with it. Listen to our song, please, but also listen to "Mississippi."

The vocals, rhythm guitar, drums, and bass were recorded live as a band. Additional guitars, percussion, harmonica, background vocals were added later as overdubs. Our friend Matt Riggle overdubbed the harmonica part. Later I would go on to pick up the harmonica myself for other recordings, but Matt helped render the vision for this one, and The Coral Gables hereby honor his contribution.

The "mansion named for a billionaire" line refers to The Phillips Collection. It's a good museum, I recommend visiting it to see some paintings, some famous, some not. I'm not sure if Mr. Phillips was actually a billionaire, but the word "billionaire" had more punch than the word "millionaire." I apologize to his ghost for my creative license. The Europeans and middle brow hacks were, however, completely real. There really is no way to escape the tyranny of the middle brow.