New York from Mental Photograph by brad byrd

Some songs take years to write and this one, although fairly simple in appearance, took me close to 10 years to capture lyrically. Perhaps it was my own PTSD from the event that took me a while to form my thoughts around it. Sometimes you don't even know what a song is about until years after it is has been written and recorded, and I'd like to believe that in some way "New York" is about how I felt emotionally when I woke up in a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona and turned the tv on 10 years ago. I had some pretty serious feelings of guilt having just left New York to move to Los Angeles and not being there when it happened. I basically grew up in NYC in my twenties having lived there from college until I was 28. I used to go to bed at night with a direct view out my window of the Twin Towers. To wake up in a foreign city and see this was devastating for me. I was in the process of driving cross country when the attack happened, and a friend was staying at my place in Brooklyn (who took this picture). "Looking back it all seems like a dream" (or rather a nightmare). However, I tried to end the song on an uplifting theme sonically and lyrically "look out your window look what you have got". RIP all victims of 9/11, and terrorist attacks around the world. We shall overcome.

Indie rock/alt country singer/songwriter/producer/artist

brad-byrd.com