"Overheard in an All Night Diner" is less about eavesdropping on the patrons' specific conversations, than about the transcendent, almost surreal feeling of being there at four in the morning at the end of a long night. The sound is hazy, echoing, and swaying side to side -- like the character narrating it -- and conveys the atmosphere with swirling synthesizers, distorted electric guitars and a piano peeping through intermittently.
“The song grew from an old poem and from a series of lines jotted down in a notebook during a period of writing in an all-night diner, near an old house I lived in in Toronto. There is a charm in diners that has always bred creativity, a charm that transcends bottomless coffee refills, and cheap breakfast. Further romanticizing the setting was the Tom Waits album Nighthawks at the Diner, whose album art was itself inspired by a famous 1940s Edward Hopper painting of a diner, ‘Nighthawks,’” remembers Wayne
Ryan Wayne is a Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He first came to recognition as a founding member and songwriter in the critically acclaimed, award-winning band, The Warped 45s (Pheromone Recordings).
