Hard to Get Home is a tall tale street band folk song where Tom Waits meets David Bromberg.  The loose-limbed recording could have been done in a LIVE Room at the Saint James Infirmary, with Dr. John prescribing the meds.  It is just that sick.

Reaching back into delta blues tradition with my vintage 1931 National steel guitar and Drew Nugent’s 1923 C.G. Conn “victor” model cornet, the approach is intentionally imperfect and improvisational.  The travel fantasy lyrics are replete with bad dream sequences of insolvency, temptation, perdition, and seduction.  But (spoiler alert) all is not lost. There’s redemption before the coda, when the tune goes dancing home, sweet home.

The first iteration of this song was written at my son, Paul Evans’ home in Hammond, Louisiana in 2017.  Drew, Michael and I stayed chez Paul for a few days while we did some writing and explored New Orleans.  We ended up working on a couple of other tunes then, and this song was set aside until Vanessa heard it and said it had a vibe that she thought justified its resurrection.  The two of us worked on revising it in April, 2022 and then made a demo for Drew, Jim, and the Seniors at Elm Street Studios.  Michael did an amazing job of playing percussion from LA and “flying” it in digitally to be in the mix.  What a joy to finally have this project come to life.

Here are the deets & credits:

Record Label: Double Ohs Music, LLC
Recorded:  May, 2022, at Elm Street Studios, Conshohocken, PA
Peter Evans: Steel Guitar, Vocals & Songwriting
Drew Nugent: Piano, Trumpet, Shout & Songwriting
Michael Jerome: Percussion & Songwriting
Jim Stager: Bass & Shout
Nancy Senior: Accordion and Assistant Engineer
Vanessa Silberman: Producer, Mixing, Mastering & Songwriting
John Senior: Engineer
Christopher Gentile: Music Lyrics Video Production

If you’d like to download the song or share it with a friend, here are the links to i-Tunes and Amazon Digital Music