Burgundy Shoes

“‘Burgundy Shoes’ was really trying to find a moment in my memory that I could really feel joy in and I went back to one of my earliest memories of waiting for the bus in the town that I grew up in. It was a big, exciting trip to the big city that was Bangor, Maine (laughs) with my mom on a really beautiful spring day. When you grow up in the Northeast, you have to wear big boots for the whole winter and then suddenly your mom says it’s OK to take your boots off and you feel like you’re walking on air ‘cause your feet are in these shoes. And they’re pretty shoes, not ugly boots. It was just that simple moment - having that time with my mom and thinking about I used to think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. When you start digging back into being really little, you find all these memories that are very pure and aren’t crowded by anxiety or anything like that. I was trying to write that song from the point of view of who I was then.” -Patty Griffin

That's exactly the image I got when I ran across this track on her latest release. I played it like 5 times in a row. What a great song...

in my opinion the song is about a faint memory of patty's, maybe with her mom? physically moving from a very cold place, to a warm town, and all the metaphors along with it.

portalqey I think you are right. That is exactly what I think. By the way, in my opinion this song is probably one of patty's best songs. I have listened to it hundreds of time already :)

This song is so just genuinely beautiful.

People living in the south may not understand this. I grew up in Toronto where the change of seasons is clearly felt. The first time I heard this song it sent me right back to my childhood. For a few years, on the first warm day of spring, I would put on my sneakers, get on my bike and just cruise back and forth on the street in front of our house. It's hard to describe the feeling of energy that used to surge through my body, like liquid bliss. It was like the warm sun that I could feel above me was pulling it up from my feet to the top of my head - like a magnet. I used to wonder if the sun was God. I guess it kind of is. It was here before the earth and in a way, created us.

The great thing about this song is the economy. Everything is just as it is the way remembered. It becomes us waiting for that bus, you can look down and see the burgundy shoes, feel the cold vynyl seat; great when you had your big boots on all winter, now your feet are light and legs are bare and oh that stuff, Sun, Sun, Sun Sun....