why is you the way you is?
ok so once upon a time- I was twenty-something and living in Charles Village in Baltimore- I got a phone call on a Friday evening from some college friends. They said they had a group of folks staying in a beach house in Rehoboth and invited me to come out for the weekend. My Uncle Phil had just died and I was bummed about that and also that I couldn’t fly out West for the funeral. So Rehoboth with some friends sounded pretty good, and I love the ocean even if I don’t get any special thrill from long sand beaches.
I got lost in Rehoboth trying to find my friends’ house, and wound up making multiple three point turns- sometimes in the same place multiple times, as I drove back and forth looking for the road that led to the road that led to the house.
I was somewhere near the corner of Frustrated and Amused and feeling very self-conscious and muttered something to myself (I often mutter things to myself, and my self mutters back) about being another lousy tourist- both in the terms of being inept because I couldn’t find the house and in terms of being unwanted by the locals.
I did finally find my friends’ house, and while I was there I wrote a song called “Rehoboth” on a bright orange ukulele. The chorus goes:
“I’m another lousy tourist in Rehoboth
Drawin’ three-point turns on your streets
Wonderin’ what I’m doin’ in this fine resort city
When I don’t even like the beach”
This was the first song I’d written that really felt complete and that I was confident about singing in front of an audience (after a decade or so of trying), and it was followed by a flood of other songs, and open mics (especially at the Red House Tavern in Canton,) my first self-released album (on CD!), and even a few gigs. So it was a pretty significant marker in my life.
After a solid stretch focusing most of my free time on music I “took a break” for a while [read: I was not in a good place mentally]; and around the time I started therapy again and stopped drinking I started writing songs again, and at that point I decided that Another Lousy Tourist made a fitting stage name/social media handle/nom dé plume; and that’s the story behind why you are reading this at AnotherLousyTourist.com
If you’d like to hear the whole song, it’s on the yoo-hoo tooob: https://youtu.be/f5QI6nU2_kI?si=j_Acnjum1I0CpXNT
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