I will be the first to admit that when it comes to music, I get misty at points. I guess it's the sentiment of a song, if it lines up with something that I could never intimate to someone else. Love, death, remorse, all the biggies that get that lacrimal gland going in our everyday lives. I have even frequently wondered if it's some evil recipe in the chords and sounds that makes me turn into a bald and tattooed mass of nerves.
Whenever a song makes me tear up, I get all angry at the artist. Like they sat in a studio and said, "Fuck that dude! Let's write a song that makes him cry in traffic like a bitch!"
When Justin Townes Earle recorded "Mama's Eyes," the first track released of March's Midnight at the Movies, he probably added "And let me make damn sure it reminds him of his spotty relationship with his dad and touches on the fact that he looks like his mom, but with a beard!"
I can't stop listening to this song at my desk. Each time it comes up on random play on my media player, it gets an additional two or three spins. Maybe it's universally claustrophobic situation between fathers and sons, the drug references, or the realization that you inherit more of your values from your mother than you would ever care to admit, at least around the icehouse that gets me.
The record doesn't come out until early March. When I first heard the song at his sold-out gig at Mucky Duck in December, I put my hoodie up over my head and downed a glass of wine so people wouldn't look at the titty baby. The song has already had numerous blogs saying that I'm not the only Kleenex-wielding bro out there when it comes to this song at it's over two minutes of embarrassing unmanliness.