After four months of City Winery Cellar Sessions premieres, Roger Street Friedman is ending his four-month residency with PopMatters on a positive note with “Shoot the Moon”. Throughout his residency, Friedman and his band brought us grooving funk and searing blues before slowing things down with a sentimental folk song. With the titular “Shoot the Moon”, Friedman, along with drummer Tim Toscano, guitarist Frank Ferrera, bassist Matt Schneider, and keyboardist Steve Uh, brings us an Americana-fueled amalgam of the sounds he’s brought to us thus far.
Friedman tells PopMatters, “With this song I came up with the groove and the progression first. I just started singing some words over the verse chords, and they all pretty much popped out whole along with the chorus. This is a funny one in that I was just singing words and writing them down with no thought to whether they made sense or not. I was thinking I’d go back later and write real words. I recorded a voice memo into my iPhone, and when I went back to work on it some more about a week later, I realized that they made perfect sense to me. It’s really about taking your best shot and going for broke, shooting for the moon, in whatever it is you do.”
On this video, in particular, he says, “There was an issue with one of the valves and red wine was leaking onto the floor, so it smelled like wine for the shoot. Being around the leaking wine barrel made me want to have some nice red wine, which we did after the shoot when we had lunch upstairs!”
As for what’s next for Roger Street Friedman, the singer-songwriter is intent on making a positive change in the world with his “One Million Downloads for Safety” campaign. All proceeds from the sale of his song “No Safe Place” will benefit USA for UNHCR and like-minded organizations that aid refugees. “I am brokenhearted by the plight of these children and their families,” Friedman says in a press release. “I felt like I had to help. This campaign seemed like a great way to move other people to contribute while also raising awareness of the issue.”