New Song Of The Day: Greg Fleming – Lucille’s Gotta Go Back Home

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Greg Fleming has a new one to share today…it is Lucille’s Gotta Go Back Home.

Its always good to hear from Greg, and today is no exception. Here’s the record company blurb with details:

The fourth single Lucille’s Gotta Go Back Home off Fleming’s upcoming album Same City is out now. In it Fleming returns to a character who has popped up twice before in songs in the last decade.

“Lucille’s first adventure was in Edge of the City’s Recent Hire. She left Auckland in a hurry – a trail of wreckage in her wake. Then she popped up a couple of years later in Philadelphia in Lucille on the To Hell With These Streets album, but as a missing person. That song was narrated by a barman answering questions given by a private detective her father had employed.

“Last year, when I wrote this record, I started wondering what might’ve happened to her. She’d be in her late twenties now. Would she ever come back home? Did she get clean? Could her mother and father ever forgive her? This song is the result.”

Recorded 2020 at The Lab – Produced by Wayne Bell and Greg Fleming.

About Greg Fleming and The Working Poor

Greg’s first show was opening up for Texan legend Townes Van Zandt since then he’s built up a reputation as a razor sharp songwriter – adept in a wide range of styles and settings. The Working Poor are one of Australasia’s finest, forward-thinking bands.

Their album To Hell With These Streets made the top 10 best albums of 2016 at elsewhere.co.nz – it followed the highly acclaimed Stranger In My Own Hometown and 2014’s Forget the Past – which enjoyed 4 star reviews both at home and internationally. 2019’s Get Off at Lincoln continued Fleming’s exploration of the highways and byways of Auckland City.

“Fleming combines the raw urgency of Steve Earle, the urban poetry of Lou Reed and the song craft of a James McMurtry – it’s amazing he’s not better known.”

“Fleming knows how to set up a scene and get his little vignettes across within the length of a typical pop song (perhaps he could teach Dylan a thing or two…)” Marty Duda 13th Floor

“these songs move from observational to internal narratives and present hard and often uncomfortable truths about what we have allowed ourselves to become. Our country as it shouldn’t be? Gripping stuff.” Graham Reid, Elsewhere

In a country of fake folkies, Fleming is a consummate songwriter (‘Edge of the City’ was one of my favourite albums of 2012), a no-nonsense poet of Auckland’s urban sprawl… Like the great country songwriters (Townes, H. Williams I, George Jones) Fleming uses the everyday as fertile material — it doesn’t need a whole lot else.” Grade A  ReallyReal Review, Nov 2016

“To Hell With These Streets is the most confident and most sonically engaging, as well as the most disgruntled album he’s made. But what’s extra impressive is the continuity with the rest of the music he’s made this decade. Greg Fleming is on a roll, and long may he roll.” Nick Bollinger The Sampler Radio NZ

“…noir songs about late nights, tragic figures and chance encounters… Occasionally they’re acoustic – take Liquor Store, a downcast tale on a tragic store hold up – but more often they roll along with tough backing from Fleming’s truly fantastic backing band, The Working Poor. Evocative songs that are wonderfully played and beautifully produced.”

Jack Barlow Sunday Star Times

Lucille’s Gotta Go Back Home  (words and music by Greg Fleming)

Lucille’s gotta go back home. Catch a plane in the morning. Her mother’s dying, her father keeps calling. She tells her boyfriend – “slow down, not so fast.” They both know, they both know it’s the last time. Her father’s standing at Mc Donald’s. She sees him first. Eight years away and he’s grey and in the same shirt. Awkward hugs, she knows he’s wondering -“is she clean?”

She wants to cry but here her tears, they don’t mean anything. “You’ll always be my baby.” Were the last words she said. And the mother she blamed for everything lay dead. That night at a motel with an old boyfriend. She tells him – “you better make it last, cos this won’t happen again.” Lucille’s gotta go back home. Her father drives. She gets out at the drop-off zone and both of them cry. And she says sorry for all the shit. “That wasn’t me.” She promises to come back soon, but this is the last time he’ll ever see her. Lucille’s got a brand new home and a kid of her own. She’s tired all the time. But she’s got hope.

 

Marty Duda
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