Gone Coastal is a map

"Gone Coastal" names three real places in a row, and people who don't live here assume I invented them to sound local. They're all real, they're all within about ten minutes of each other, and the song is more or less a driving route.

Midnight Pass. The south end of Siesta Key. It used to be an actual pass — water ran through between Siesta and Casey Key until it closed up in the eighties. What's left is a road that ends, a stretch of quiet beach, and a name better than anything I could have made up. When I need a place to end a verse I go there.

Point of Rocks. South Siesta, the rocky bit where the sand stops behaving. It's the snorkelling spot, and it's the one part of that beach that doesn't look like a postcard — it looks like geology. The water goes clear over it in a way that doesn't photograph.

The Daiquiri Deck. Siesta Key Village. Not remotely a secret, and that's exactly why it's in there. Every town has the place everybody's been to, and the shared memory of it is worth more in a song than something obscure and impressive.

That's the whole logic. I put real places in songs because a real place carries weight an invented one can't. If you've stood on Point of Rocks the line lands differently. If you haven't, it still sounds like somewhere — because it is somewhere.

There's a version of songwriting where you keep everything general so it can be about anyone's town. I understand the argument and I think it's backwards. The songs that got to me were specific — somebody's actual street, actual bar, actual bridge — and the specificity is what left room for me to put my own version in.

"Sarasota Lights" does the same with St. Armands, Longboat and the Ringling bridge. "Her Last Sunset" is Lido. "Siesta Key Forever" is exactly what it says on the tin.

If you're local, the songs are a map of a place you already know. If you're not — come down. The pass really did close. The rocks are still there.