People sometimes ask us where “The Ruffled Feathers” name comes from. Charley, our piano player, explains:
“The name for The Ruffled Feathers came from the original title of our song now known as Home. The piano part was thought up during a hot summer rainstorm in Shanghai (the city where I was born), while the lyrics were written in Vancouver (the city that me and the band call home). If you listen closely to the words, it is about walking down Granville St. at night, past all the clubs and bars downtown, and witnessing the carnival that takes place there. Crowds of well-dressed people juxtaposed with penniless bottle collectors, united in their drunkenness, but living in such alien worlds. Some of the richest people in the world come to drink and debauch in Vancouver, just around the corner from what is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in N. America.
The notion of having “ruffled feathers” comes from a very particular feeling of being upset. It is a paltry, unimportant type of upset. It’s about recognizing that sometimes your own problems are completely insignificant in a larger context. What are the petty dramas and minute tragedies of the Granville St. crowd compared to those of someone abandoned by the world, begging on the street corner? Nothing more than a few ruffled feathers. And know that eventually, all ruffled feathers are smoothed by the wind.”
With all this talk of debauchery, here’s a GIF of us busking on Granville St. Earlier in the year, we picked a particularly volatile spring day where it rained, hailed, then was sunny all in one hour. Vancouver is a sensitive but beautiful young woman!
- Andrew
“The name for The Ruffled Feathers came from the original title of our song now known as Home. The piano part was thought up during a hot summer rainstorm in Shanghai (the city where I was born), while the lyrics were written in Vancouver (the city that me and the band call home). If you listen closely to the words, it is about walking down Granville St. at night, past all the clubs and bars downtown, and witnessing the carnival that takes place there. Crowds of well-dressed people juxtaposed with penniless bottle collectors, united in their drunkenness, but living in such alien worlds. Some of the richest people in the world come to drink and debauch in Vancouver, just around the corner from what is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in N. America.
The notion of having “ruffled feathers” comes from a very particular feeling of being upset. It is a paltry, unimportant type of upset. It’s about recognizing that sometimes your own problems are completely insignificant in a larger context. What are the petty dramas and minute tragedies of the Granville St. crowd compared to those of someone abandoned by the world, begging on the street corner? Nothing more than a few ruffled feathers. And know that eventually, all ruffled feathers are smoothed by the wind.”
With all this talk of debauchery, here’s a GIF of us busking on Granville St. Earlier in the year, we picked a particularly volatile spring day where it rained, hailed, then was sunny all in one hour. Vancouver is a sensitive but beautiful young woman!
- Andrew
