“Root Beer Shoes” is the brand new video from Elk City‘s 2018 LP, Everybody’s Insecure. At its core, the band is lead vocalist LoBue and drummer/producer Ray Ketchem, who have been working together since the early 1990s. “Root Beer Shoes” spotlights the playfulness and imaginative associations prevalent in LoBue’s lyrics.
She contemplates the fate of Charles Bukowski’s onetime lover, Cupcakes O’ Brien, the many marries of Ernest Hemingway, returns to the impossible-to-forget image of root beer shoes. What it means matters less than knowing there’s someone unguarded enough with the art to bring that strange, beautiful image into the world.
“I think it’s maybe the closest I’ve come to writing a song that could be in a Broadway musical,” LoBue told PopMatters earlier this year. “It was very easy to write. It’s just sort of me thinking aloud.”
Ketchem added, “It’s very whimsical. That’s what I’ve always loved about it. I thought we should keep it simple and then almost orchestral at the end and let it sweep you away.
Everybody’s Insecure is available via Bar/None Records. Joining Ketchem and LoBue in their musical endeavors are guitarist Sean Eden (Luna), keyboardist Carl Baggaley and bassist Martin Olson. The band has also just added a new guitarist, Chris Robertson.