I Feel Home

Album: Souls Aflame (2000)
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Songfacts®:

  • Hometown: Rockville, Maryland. This is where the founding members of O.A.R. spent their childhoods. And this song, says lead singer Marc Roberge, is a joyful honoring of their hometown.
    Together since they were in junior high school, the band spent many writing and jam sessions in the driveways of their houses, and the fields and parking lots surrounding their neighborhoods. "We spent so many nights sitting together and building these bonds and these friendships," says Marc.
    This particular song was written over that period of time. "We were on my friend Frank's driveway sitting on my car. I mean, we had our little acoustic guitars. We – this guy Mike, who's no longer with us, and this girl, and Frank – and we were just sitting there and I was screwing around on the guitar. It had a lot to do with where we were from. All of our parents earned what they got, and then gave us all great childhoods. So our nights together we were always happy. We had conflict, but when we were chillin' on the driveway, it was all good. So we sat there, and I came up with that tag, 'I feel home,' and then I went back to school in Ohio and finished writing it, which I think was better because I was away and I was a little objective. But it was basically about that moment, how special it was."
    When their friend Mike died, Roberge had planned to play this song at his funeral. "I opened up my guitar case and one of my strings was broken," he remembers. "And I was like, 'Aw, sh*t, it's gonna sound terrible. I don't have a tuner, no mic, nothing.' I said, 'Mike, please just make this be all right.' And everything was cool, and it was a good moment. So that song, we hold that really close to us. It's kind of like an ode to a time period that shaped our entire lives."
  • "My poor parents, they're in the same house I grew up in," says Marc. "They see a car outside, they love it. They don't get worried. They're like, 'Look, somebody's out in front of the house.' I go, 'Mom... ' (laughing) 'Close the door!' She's like, 'Oh, should I say hi? Should I bring them cookies?' She is the sweetest. And she still has all my stuff up on the walls, and all the other brothers' and everything."
  • This is one song, says Marc, that they never tire of playing. "It's crazy. I play that same song five, six times a week, for ten years or whatever, and never get sick of it. When we get sick of a song we stop playing it. You won't hear it for like a year because we're sick of it." (Check out our full interview with Marc Roberge.)

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