Happy Friday everyone! I’m very excited to share today’s new Song of the Week, but before I do — I want to invite you, if you’re a mainland New Englander, to come see me playing with my backing band, the Agreeable Men, this weekend! I have two afternoon shows:
Saturday, Oct. 5 at Cisco Brewers in the Boston Seaport. 1-430pm!
Sunday, Oct. 6 at Cisco Brewers in Portsmouth, NH. 12-330pm!
Hope to see you there!
Art: Rich Sullivan
Ted MacInnes has been playing drums for me since 2015. The dude is a great songwriter in his own right, and he and I teamed up to co-write “Double Shifts”. This is a honky tonk tune written for our Sunday honky tonk residency at the Ritz Cafe in Oak Bluffs — it’s about life in them blaring dive bar stagelights, playing multiple gigs a night, giving people what they want and leaving it all on the stage. “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it!” If you’ve seen us on a Sunday night at the Ritz, you’ve probably heard this song. It’s a fan-favorite, and people have been begging me to get this song online — so, without further ado, here is “DOUBLE SHIFTS!”
Just in case you missed last week’s new song, here it is. This seems to really have struck a chord with folks — I initially thought it would have primarily local appeal, since it’s about the Vineyard off-season — and I’m getting a lot of nice feedback about the grungey psychedelic vibes and the lyrics. I suppose we can all relate a bit to the mix of excitement and disappointment that the Autumn brings, since for some the cooldown is great, while for others, it signals the beginning of seasonal depression. Hey, music is for processing feelings — all the feelings. Enjoy “You Know What I Mean”!
Last Friday, coinciding with the release of “You Know What I Mean”, the one and only Eric Danton — writer for Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, Pitchfork, Paste, and more — published a fantastic write-up in his “Freak Scene” newsletter about my song-a-week project, as well as a summary of my new chapter as a Vineyard musician and minister. Read “Freak Scene #33: Why Seán McMahon Writes a New Song Every Week” here!
Not only that — yours truly has contributed an article to the “Have Faith” column Martha’s Vineyard Times. A bit of an opinion piece on the role of pop music in sacred music. Read “Have Faith: Sacred pop music?” here!
Thanks for being a part of my life y’all. God bless,
Seán
