The cooler side

October is when the year finally gives in down here, which makes it a good month to talk about a song most people haven't found.

"Cooler Side" is on Somewhere Past Midnight, the record where I go quiet and atmospheric and stop sounding like a beach party. It isn't country. It isn't really anything with a clean label on it, which is both why I like it and why it doesn't travel far.

It came out of a small thing. There's a night, usually late September or early October, when you step outside and the air has changed — not cold, nothing like cold, just no longer actively hostile. Four degrees of difference, maybe. And every single person who lives here notices it on the same night and says something about it to somebody.

That's the whole song: the relief of a hard season loosening its grip a little. I kept the arrangement as spare as I could stand, because the feeling itself is a small one and a big production would have flattened it into something it isn't.

It's not a song I'd ever put on at a party, and that's fine. Not everything has to fill a room.

If you've got a window that opens, tonight might be the night for it. Go check the air.