Music Review // Robert Thomas and the sessionmen "Cast a Line"

 

During this music video you can see the song being played.  You can see those strums of the acoustic guitar and you can see the moment the violin enters the song as well.   This very much creates a sound that you would expect someone to be playing back in the day before recorded music while sitting on a porch in the hot summer time.  I would expect there to be someone blowing into a jug with this band, but perhaps that is best left for a different song.  Yes, these are those good old fashioned blues.

One thing I really like about this song is how I feel like it's a good sing along.  It's the type of song that you don't have to hear a lot of times to just come in and sing the chorus lines of "Gonna cast a line / Gonna reel you in".   I can certainly picture this song in a number of different movies and relating with other artists, but I recently watched "The Jerk" for the thousandth time and I think it would have fit into that movie pretty well.  

Lyrically you want to think about this song in the sense of love as compared with fishing.  There is an entire dance move where you pretend to cast an imaginary line to reel in someone else to dance with and it feels like this song has that same idea.  Although if you find someone suitable you'll say "What a catch" and people will tell you "There are plenty of fish in the sea".  So why does love have so much to do with fishing?

As much as I enjoy the double meaning in the lyrics, this song could just as easily be about fishing and taken at surface value.  And I think that is one of the things which makes it so special because even if you've been married for twenty years but just enjoy fishing, you can put this song on in your truck while you drive to get you ready to catch all the fish you please.  You can also get it stuck in your head and then have it eventually relate back with your love life as well.  That's the duality of "Cast a Line".