This song was inspired by Atahualpa Yupanqui. I love how he not only sang but played guitar and I tried to create for myself the kind of demanding part he played so effortlessly. In my earliest demos of it I was using an Argentine bombo as percussion, but I took it in more of a Spanish direction as I began to define the production for this album.

No writer has had any greater affect on me than Fernando Pessoa, both his prose and his poetry. Feeling his influence in certain lyrics throughout the project, I really hoped to add some Portuguese inflections here and there on the album, also because I spent time writing portions of this album in Lisbon. Early on I wrote a couple of songs in the style of fado that weren’t good enough to belong on this (or any) album. But I knew that the Portuguese guitarra used in fado would be an interesting color to add, along with the acoustic bass guitar I’ve seen used so effectively by fado groups as well. Jimmy Haslip was able to borrow an acoustic bass guitar for this, and after giving up trying to find anyone near LA capable of playing guitarra – let alone on something like this – I was forced to buy a guitarra and teach myself how to play it. Apologies to the real players out there for my bastardized approach! What an amazing instrument. It would take a lifetime to learn how to play it well.