“I’m sick and tired of picking these thorns from my leg,” Rick Mitarotonda wrote for a song called “Turned Clouds.”
“I’ve packed every inch of the getaway car for someplace new,” he penned for a song called “Lead the Way.”
“And I’ve been saving shotgun for you.”
Then there are the words from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu sacred text, that he included in song called “Indian River.”
If you’re intrigued by Mitarotonda’s lyrics, or the idea of a band called Goose that blends contemporary folk and funk with a touch of jazz and blues, reggae and rock, and even a hint of Sanskrit, you can hear more during a concert set for 10 p.m. Oct. 25 at the River Street Jazz Cafe.
Goose, a four-musician band based out of Norwalk, Conn., that performed in July at Scranton’s Peach Music Festival, includes Peter Anspach on vocals, keyboards and guitar; Trevor Bass on bass and Ben Atkind on drums.
Mitarotonda sings and plays guitar and since he writes the songs, a reporter just had to ask him about the inspiration behind those lyrics.
“At the time, I was struggling with a lot of physical illness,” Mitarotonda said of writing that line about metaphorical thorns in his leg. “It took some time to really figure it out, but the real cause of that physical illness was emotional — the grief and drama. The line largely refers to that.”
While he’s worked through that difficult period, he said, “for the most part, life continues to throw new things at you. You graduate from one challenge and level up to another.”
