MUSIC FOR FEBRUARY 2025
‘I NEVER DRINK ALONE’
When my band Day for Night performs “I Never Drink Alone,” I like to joke that it’s the most depressing song I’ve ever written, most depressing song you’ll ever hear, etc. That may or may not be a funny joke, but what’s for sure is the self-awareness: I know this is one of my best songs, but I also know that it’s a real downer.
So what’s it about? In short, they say you shouldn’t drink alone, and the narrator of “I Never Drink Alone” never does — thanks only to the ghosts and memories that keep him company at the bar.
Like my 1996 composition “Watching You Go,” “I Never Drink Alone” is an attempt to anticipate or envision or reconcile myself to (or inoculate myself against) the expected desolation of old age. I wrote it in 2012, during which year my wife and bandmate, Gretchen Schaefer, my sisters, and I were preparing to move Ben and Hattie Hubley, then in their early 90s, into a memory-care facility.
It wasn’t too long thereafter that the ghosts began to gather, along with the intimations that with those two songs, at least, my aim was true.
Hear “I Never Drink Alone” below, performed by Day for Night in November 2016. Buy it on Bandcamp! (“I Never Drink Alone” copyright © 2014 by Douglas L. Hubley. All rights reserved. Photo above by Jeffery Stanton. Photo below: Gretchen Schaefer and Doug Hubley are Day for Night.)