These lyrics were my finals at Songwriting w/Jim Bruno class at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, California where he challenged students to write songs outside of their comfort zones. Instead of writing about race and violence in America, I wrote about a boy whose dog Buddy is accidentally left behind during a family road trip.
Chuck Berry's and Little Richard's rock 'n' roll inspired me. "Go, Buddy, go" echoes Berry's "Go, Johnny, go" from his song "Johnny B. Good." Rapper Eminem's vowel bending rhymes inspired me as well. When I sing "door," I drop the "r" at the end and say "doh" so that it rhymes with "go." Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" inspired me to tell a story with a beginning, middle, end, conflict, twist, and high stakes.
The video is my first public performance of my song at the East Bay Coffee Company Open Mic in Pinole, California on October 19, 2017. I never know what a crowd of one hundred teenagers will do. They cheered, laughed, and chanted at unexpected places, but I rolled with them.
