Down In the Bowery

Album: Street Songs of Love (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds a father trying to help his son as he struggles to find life's meaning. Escovedo explained to Express Night Out that he penned this for his own discontent son: "'Down in the Bowery' is a song I wrote for my son who is 18 and an angry young man, very quiet, very much into his music, [with] very strong opinions about his music as to why he likes it. He's always been that way since he was a little boy. I love my son very much. [He's a] graffiti artist, a drummer and singer in a punk rock band. I'm very proud of him. The song kind of encourages him to be who he wants to be, and that I will always have his back as a result of my love for him."
  • Ian Hunter contributes full-throated vocals to this song. Escovedo explained that he owes a lot to the former Mott the Hoople singer. "No one ever told me those things when I was a kid growing up, except for Ian Hunter in his songs. His songs were really my only kind of parental advice, in a way. So to have him sing on it is really beautiful. I'm kind of passing this knowledge on to my son within the song. It's almost generational in a way."

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