A newly-released song tells a story that Windsorites might to relate to.
Riverside Rose is about two young people who met and fell in love in the city in 1964:
On the banks of the Detroit River
I was looking into your eyes
We had the heartbeat of modern America
Rushing by our sides
And I met you in the summertime
The air was hot, you were on my mind
And I asked you would you be my rose tonight?
Would you be my Riverside rose tonight?
The song is based on a true story, singer-songwriter Josh Geddis explained, a tribute to his mother-in-law and father-in-law who met in Windsor. The couple got married in 1970 and eventually relocated.
Geddis said he also wanted to capture what the city was like during those days.
“We lost my father in law several years back to cancer, and I met a lot of interesting characters in the lineup at his visitation, and I wanted to take kind of a snapshot of what it must have been like to be part of that … 1960s, 1970s era in Windsor,” Geddis said.
EP deals with loss
His mother-in-law appreciates the song, he said.
“It’s always neat to have a song written about you or about someone you love, so you know, as a songwriter… you just hope you do it justice and you hope that it brings a little bit more closure,” he said.
But she’s corrected him on a few things, including the song’s reference to staring through “Chrysler glass.”
“My mother-in-law, I still call her Windsor girl … all the way through, she’s like, ‘actually his coolest car was a 1967 Mustang Fastback, it wasn’t a Chrysler,'” he said with a smile.
The song is the first track off of the Bayfield, Ont., performer’s new EP, The Quiet I Never Knew.
His father-in-law’s death is one of several personal losses that the album addresses.
The album’s title track, about the death of his brother-in-law and good friend, references a trip to Detroit to see Beck, a concert they didn’t know would be their last together.
“Each song … kind of tells a story of relationships that were lost with real good people over several years,” he said. “But [the album] is not as sad as it sounds.”