coastal alt/indie rock

​​Field Notes​​

​​​​

On the surface, "California Here I Come" is a pretty simple one.

 

It started with the drum feel.

Boom-cha, ba-boom-cha. Boom-cha, ba-boom-cha.

 

I had that rhythm in my head and wanted to build a song around it, so I picked up the acoustic guitar and started strumming. Almost immediately, the first line came out:

​

I’m talking to a California friend…

Whenever a line like that appears, I’m always wondering where it wants to take me. The next line was:

​

She tells me that her love's come to an end…

 

That opened the door to one story: two people who knew each other long ago, drifted apart, lived separate lives, and now maybe, decades later, have a chance to reconnect. You see those stories all the time — high school sweethearts, college loves, people who moved on and then somehow found their way back to each other.

​

But in parallel, the song isn’t only about reconnecting with an old friend or an old lover. It’s about reconnecting with the dream of California itself.

​

The “California friend” in the song represents California to me. She’s a person, but she’s also a place, a memory, a promise, a myth. When I sing that “the flower’s fading” and “I hear it in her voice,” that could mean her own beauty or spirit is fading. But it could also mean the flower of California is fading.

​

Or maybe that’s just what people keep saying.

​

People have been declaring the death of California forever. They do it with cities, countries, eras, music scenes, cultures, dreams. They say the good part is over. They say you missed it. They say you should have been there before it changed.

​

And yet, in the chorus, there’s still “a fragrance floating in the air.” There’s still “a dream to chase if we dare.” The romanticism is still alive.

​

That’s the tension I like in the song. The narrator hears that something may be disappearing, so he says, essentially: I need to see it all before it’s dead and gone.

​

California, here I come.

 

Depending on who you are, you might get there and decide it isn’t what it was. Or you might get there and find that it’s everything you ever dreamed it could be. Both things can be true. California is real, but it’s also a projection screen. People bring their longing with them.

​

Verse two leans into that classic westward pull: Route 66, the desert, Santa Monica. I grew up on the East Coast, so the desert has always felt like part of the great California revelation to me. I love the desert, and I love that sense of crossing into an entirely different emotional and physical landscape.

​

By the time the song reaches Santa Monica, the personal and symbolic stories merge. She’ll meet me there with “an open heart and bare feet.” That’s the soul of California in one image — casual, beautiful, welcoming, ocean-facing, a little impossible.

​

I've only been to Santa Monica once... but it was every bit of my romantic California vision: pier, boardwalk, palms, water, girls, sand, ferris wheel. Yeah, I'm a romantic...

​

Musically, I was clearly hearing all the California sounds that have lived in my head and heart for decades: 12-string guitars, harmonies, ocean air, the Laurel Canyon feeling, the golden pop-rock tradition. I wasn’t trying to imitate any one thing exactly, but all of that music is in my bones, so it naturally found its way into the song.

 

A couple of friends told me I couldn’t possibly call the song "California Here I Come", because the title already belonged to something well known.

​

But songs name themselves.

​

This one named itself, so I rolled with it.

And I’m happy I did.

​​