Today, Latch Key Kid takes the spotlight on You Make My World Rock. I’ve chosen this musician to listen to because he is playing the opening spot of the Beachlife Festival on Saturday, May 4, 2019. I’ll be attending the festival, held in Redondo Beach, that same day, though I don’t think I’ll be arriving as early as 11:15am when he hits the Riptide Stage. Latch Key Kid is the band name taken on by local resident and musician, Gavin Heaney. I chose him because I looked at the festival line up and he was one of the acts that I hadn’t heard of, though he has been creating albums for the last decade or more and playing around the area. Obviously, I don’t get out enough. He’s got a slick looking web site and its design and the cover of his latest album suggests a folk/country style. I’ve chosen to listen to the first song, “Out of Place,” from his most recent album, Downtime.
This is Music New to My Ears
These are my impressions as I listen to the song for the very first time. I am digging the minor key acoustic guitar fingerpicking at the beginning. As the vocal starts, I’m hearing a rugged tone to Heaney’s voice that perfectly suits the music and matches well with the aforementioned album design style. The music is initially sparse and the vocal track has an echo on it as if he is singing alone in a spacious, empty room. It is soon joined by an aching pedal steel that encourages the classic country feel of the song. In the opening verse he sings about feeling sad and lonely and out of place, and the production on the song makes it sound like he physically is, whether or not the line is meant to imply physical or metaphorical loneliness. The human isolation is broken as a background harmonizing vocal joins in. It is just over two minutes into the song before the drums lay down a steady beat and the pace picks up. It feels like the ending is a little abrupt with him singing, “I wouldn’t get too close my friend” and shutting the door with a single guitar strum.
Let’s Enter the Lyrics Laboratory
There are no printed lyrics of this song available on the Internet. Thankfully, he articulates well in his singing, so a close second listen helped me discern the lyrics. I’ve decided to type them all out below. See if you agree with my take on this song, after you read the lyrics.
The overall theme of this song is loneliness. While it is named “Out of Place,” that misfit feeling is actually a symptom of loneliness. The narrator of the song also seems to care more for the welfare of his friend than for his own. Whether this is an earnest attempt to warn the friend or seeking sympathy through a display of self-pity is unclear to me. But being in the bar full of people, feeling sorry for himself, and drinking alone strikes me as someone who is either an introvert afraid to start a conversation or a person who really doesn’t want to take responsibility for his situation and make any effort to change it, despite being in a place where he has such an opportunity.
He also mentions going to his hometown and it not feeling like home, which can happen as places change over time or familiar faces leave for greener pastures. Perhaps the friend he refers to is in a different location. He sings, “If you ever get this feeling and you’re in the state I’m in,” which may well be using the double meaning of the word state as the state of mind of being lonely or being in the same geographical state. Either way, if you are in the same place and you want to hang out with him or you are feeling emotionally sad and alone, you are being warned to be cautious of heading down that path, lest his influence causes you to succumb to the same moroseness.
“Out of Place”
If I could make it ’til tomorrow
If I could make it one more day
I wouldn’t feel so sad and lonely yeah
I wouldn’t feel so Out of Place
I wouldn’t feel so Out of Place
If you ever come and see me
In this sorry state I’m in
I wouldn’t try to get too close to me my friend
I wouldn’t want to get you sick
I wouldn’t want to get you sick
Because this feeling is contagious
It’s come to haunt my living soul
This loneliness is contagious yes,
It never leaves me alone
It’s never leaving me alone
Well, I went down to the barroom
I had a drink with myself
And in that crowded room of strangers
I didn’t drink with no one else
I didn’t drink with no one else
Then I went back to my apartment
Then I went back to my hotel
Then I went back down to my hometown
It never really felt like home, no no
It never really felt like home
So if you ever get this feeling
And you’re in the state I’m in
That loneliness is contagious, yes
I wouldn’t get too close my friend
I wouldn’t get too close my friend
Lyrics by Latch Key Kid/Gavin Heaney
That’s a Wrap
This song would fit in well in the canon of acoustic-guitar driven, country-spackled rock. I enjoyed listening to “Out of Place” and I liked Heaney’s vocal tone. I did wish that he would make greater use of vocal dynamics in his song as he sang at one very controlled level. I’d like to hear him pulling more punches in the song or trying to emphasize the repeated lyrics in different, nuanced ways. In the verse, “Well I went down to the barroom,” where the band is in full gear, I would have liked him to push the vocals stronger, louder, and little more raw and ragged sounding, as if he actually went to the barroom. For me, that would embellish the message of the song, show greater vulnerability, and cement the character who is clearly struggling.
Latch Key Kid is performing this coming weekend at Hey 19 in Torrance, CA on April 27 from 9pm to midnight, “jamming classic covers with original style,” according to the website. And don’t forget, Latch Key Kid is also playing at the Beachlife Festival on the morning of May 4. If you think you might enjoy the music from Latch Key Kid, You Make My World Rock encourages purchasing the music of the artists in order to allow them to continue to create.