Blues rocker Eli Cook recently released his latest album "High-Dollar Gospel" and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the single "Troublemaker." Here is the story:
This song came together very quickly. The guitar part was written in one sitting, inspired by a 12 string acoustic that I had just gotten back from having modified to play slide on, and in a very low, open tuning. The chorus wrote itself, initially, as it fit the vibe of the raunchy guitar part. The lyrics of the chorus are a mash-up of the phrase "troublemaker", which I had planned to use after seeing Jamie Foxx utter it in a particularly overly-theatrical romantic scene in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained", and Slim Harpo's blues classic "Hip Shake Thing". I capped it off with the line "love me like a 45.", which I thought clever, in that it could have two interpretations; one violently dark, the other a reference to an affinity for old music, but both equally weighted with innuendo.
The verse lyrics are partly describing myself from an outside perspective and the rest drawn from various women that I have encountered in dubious circumstances or that were questionably motivated at the time. That subject always qualifies nicely under the moniker of "Rock & Roll".
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!
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