THEA: One evening Chad announced that he’d found an old receipt in his wallet, and thought he might try writing a song about it…because he figured “that’s what Donald Fagen might do in that situation”.

I’m sure I had a puzzled (then skeptical) look on my face, but…we went ahead and worked on it.

There’s not a lot more to say about this one, except to say I’m sort of hung up on everything making sense and lyrics laying in the pocket…so a little bit of the quirky poetry and form was sacrificed to the overall story once I started working with Chad on it. The changes ended up being pretty basic but there’s a charming little Fm7 transition to the bridge that is a nice moment if you like that slightly-out-of-place sound, which I do.

We both love Steely Dan. We’ve seen them at least five times and I actually have one of Walter Becker’s guitar pedals, and Chad has a bass pedal he owned…and though—at least for us—there can be no imitation, there is always inspiration, and that’s where the seed of this idea came from.

Anything to add, Chad?

CHAD: This was an exercise exactly as Thea described - if Donald Fagan found a receipt in his wallet from long ago, with the text barely readable, what would he write about? I don’t know what that answer is, but it eventually morphed into what this is - a song about a date at a hard to find bar called “The Merc” in SoHo, and the end of a relationship.

And for the record, they actually did play post-punk bands like Joy Division in the evenings on the house tapes, and not a jukebox. But, for the sake of the song we chose “jukebox” instead.