It’s a PontiacIt’s a ’63 Stratochief with a three on the treeAnd it belongs to me
I’m taking a break from work and posting…It’s nice to be back if only for the weekend…I hope you all have been doing good!
I had this song bookmarked and I bet ya that CB forgot he sent it to me a long time ago … but I’ve listened to it for a year or so now. I love car songs and this song slots in very nicely.
Fred Eaglesmith is a Canadian and he is in the alt-country genre. He is from Port Dover, Ontario. When I listen to him he seems to ride a line between 1960s rock and country music. He has formed country bands, rock bands, and bluegrass bands…he switches lanes quite nicely. John Prine was a huge influence on Eaglesmith.
This song is from the album Lipstick, Lies, and Gasoline released in 1997. Now that is a great name for an album. This guy has been a true working musician. At one point he would average four to eight hours between shows in his converted 1990 Bluebird tour bus. He outfitted the bus with a system of filters and pumps which he designed himself to enable them to run on waste vegetable oil recycled from deep fryers in venues and restaurants along the road. He is what I would call a musical troubadour.
He has toured all over Canada, the Letterman show, the Grand Ole Opry, and everywhere in between. He is worth diving into for some great music. His debut album Fred J. Eaglesmith was released in 1980 and he has released 22 altogether.
One concert reviewer in Los Angeles said: “Eaglesmith snarled out lyrics that underscore his overriding attitude that music and musicians ought to be cherished in the here-and-now and valued for the quality of their art, not the size of their bank accounts or TV ratings.”
Fred Eaglesmith: The biggest epiphany I had was when I was 10 or 12 and I saw Elvis in a movie. I thought he wrote his own songs. I was working on a farm, just dying, you know…cold and tired…and I walked into the kitchen. We’d just gotten a television, and there was Elvis. That’s when I started writing songs-at 10 or 12.
Fred Eaglesmith: There really are two different schools of songwriting-American and Canadian. It’s interesting. You guys have this history of guys like Paul Williams and Jimmy Webb, and they’re different than Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. All those weird voices come out of Canada. That’s because it’s so cold here we can hardly open our mouth. We get much less light in Canada. No wonder the writing’s dark.
I’m including this song from his Letterman appearance.
Pontiac
It’s a PontiacIt’s a ’63 Stratochief with a three on the treeAnd it belongs to meAnd my babyHer and meWe go driving down old highway seventeenShe puts on the radioRolls down the windowLays her head backIt’s a Pontiac
It ain’t got no wild horses painted on the sideAnd the objects in the mirror are precisely their own sizeIt’s got a chrome Indian in front of the doorMight be an Apache or an ArapahoOr a Pontiac
There was an incident last nightAt seventeen and thirdIt all happened so fast nobody’s really sureBut somebody held the rifle, somebody held the sackAnd as fast as they were thereWell they were gone just like thatIn a Pontiac
The anti-freeze is boiling and the oil pressure’s lowAnd the pedal’s to the metal and it’s as fast as it can goAnd the stain on her shoulder I getting darker you knowAnd the radio keep blasting out the factsIt’s a Pontiac
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