The songs on the Liquid Courage EP, the third release by Globe Factory No. 23, were initially inspired by the craft cocktails (and their names) served at Vera, in Buffalo, NY, the beloved hometown of GF23's Rob Seidenberg.

 

In August, 2014, two weeks before the release of Globe Factory No. 23's second album, Original Sins for Copycats, Seidenberg attended a wedding in Buffalo. After the reception, he and a group of friends headed out to Vera, where he was immediately struck by the evocative names of the bar's infamous beverages. And the drinks menu seemed just like an album cover. So he decided to make it so.

 

His imagination loosed by the creative drink names, Seidenberg concocted six audio flights of fancy, each inhabiting a different musical and lyrical world, but all of them in the Globe Factory No. 23 tradition of hooky, literate rock & roll. “Earhart” spins the tale of a quirky young artist who roams the streets of Paris in a fur-lined aviator hat. “The Yellow King” is an American Gothic saga of a destitute farmer who imagines a far better life, ruling a kingdom with the local bartendress as his queen. “Tiger & Elephant” is a fever-fueled hallucination that kicks in during a Sumatran safari. “Blood and Sand” recounts the toll taken by a hard-lived, itinerant life. “The Old Cuban” checks in on a wise Havana resident who has seen the many ups and downs of his homeland. And the finale, “Lighthouse,” is the story of unmoored soul.