You might not believe it, but my first interaction with Cohn’s music wasn’t this bonafide classic, but the heart tugging Silver Thunderbird. That’s a song that hits harder once you reach that stage when you’ve lost your father.

Ghost trains was the next track of his I heard. It was on a music channel available in Mexico only through satellite dish. Since my aunt in Tampico owned one, I always think about Tampico when I listen to Ghost Trains. Might also be the fact that my aunt’s house was a couple of blocks away from a railroad track, and sometimes you might hear a train horn blasting in the dead of night, its echo reverberating through the brick and stucco walls.

Oddly enough, I encountered Walking in Memphis while having some food at the now extinct Planet Hollywood in San Francisco. It was a school trip in the winter of ’96, the chilly wind outside sometimes roared over the music and I was with a couple of friends, fending off the cold, having some overpriced burgers, and looking at the memorabilia, trying to guess the name of the movie in spanish.

I asked the waiter about the piano crooner blasting on the speakers. He wrote the name but I couldn’t find the CD on that particular trip. Cohn’s vocals croon over a simple and effective progression. It doesn’t get as heartfelt as on Walking in Memphis.

It’s strange how his music reminds me of anywhere but Memphis. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never been to the place, or simply because even if a song is tailor-made to a place in particular, that place might share emotions with another place that now only lives in your memories.

-Sam J. Valdés López