Joe Kann – Old Town Square (2022)
As the world moves forward, there are many things that are lost to the sands of time. One of these things is the small town values and lifestyle many had which is something that Joe Kann considers in his single ‘Old Town Square’. Through the acoustic folk tones of the single, he looks at the decay of small town values and life in the United States and considers what exactly we are losing.
With a nostalgic touch, Kann draws you into easy listening vibes that relax you while considering the death of a part of life. After 30 years away from music, Kann picked up the guitar in 2020 and started writing a song about parenting. He has been on a roll since then as something opened up inside him and allowed him to unleash his music to the world.
‘Old Town Square’ has a nostalgic feeling from the first acoustic guitar note. You can almost see the sepia haze settling over an old town with quaint stores and a laid-back way of life. The rolling flow of the melody fills your soul with the affection many people have for small towns, where the pace of the big city has never been felt. The rather stripped-back vibe of the melody allows the emotions of the vocals to really shine and create the emotive tug of the track. While stripped-back, the flow of the music still speaks to your soul in a way that only great folk music can.
The nostalgic haze of the melody perfectly sets the scene for the vocals that drop you into the main street of a rural small town. Through the opening lyrics, you can easily see the street in your mind and the slower pace of life that comes with it. While there is a happiness to the nostalgia, the vocals take a sadder turn as reality catches up with the past. Kann’s vocals sigh with reminiscence only to stab you in the chest with sadness as he details how everything has faded. While the lyrics detail the decay of the physical town, there is a much deeper message of the decay of the values that came from small town living. It is a really powerful single that creeps into your senses with the gentle melodic movement and emotive vocals.
Joe Kann takes us on a nostalgic ride through a small town that is in the midst of decay, while talking about a larger problem in ‘Old Town Square’. The stripped-back melody uses the roll of an acoustic guitar to take you back in time. It is Kann’s vocals that bring the emotions to the single as he reminisces about the small town before bringing the stab of sadness to the knowledge that the old way of life is gone.
Find out more about Joe Kann on his website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
