After 28 years of playing his guitar and singing songs, Bob McCall thinks he just may have caught the tail of the comet with his latest musical offering, a little ditty called "Got to Have a Cruiser Blues".
     The catchy little tune, written in the vein of the old muscle car songs of the 1960s, is about Chrysler's hot-selling retro vehicle, the PT. Cruiser, and it has caught on with the members of the Cruiser clubs that are springing up across the country.
     "It's an old rock and roll thing," said McCall. "It's a car song; it's about a car and about people that want one. There's one line in the song that tells it all. It says, 'Even Mustang Sally's got to have the PT. Cruiser Blues.’ And that's the key to the whole thing."
     McCall, 52, who appears regularly on Wednesday night at the Taurus Ale & Grillin Coconut Grove, wrote Cruiser Blues when he saw the demand for the car after it debuted last year. His fiance, Kristina Monaco, suggested that he consider the car as a subject.  "Kristina told me, 'Why don't you write me a song about that car,"' said McCall. "It was her idea and she had a lot of words involved in this song."
     Monaco acknowledges her role in the creation of the tune and says the idea came from the longing she had to own one of the cars.  "We saw the car when if first came out”, said Kristina. "Our words were, 'I gotta have that car.' That's how the song starts out."
     McCall,who came to Miami in 1993 and has played all the South Florida music clubs,Tobacco Road, Black Point Marina, Sloppy Joe's, Ugly Tuna Saloon, Taurus Ale & Grill, says it wasn't a difficult song to write, that the words seemed to flow naturally.
     "I just took myself back to my first job in. Kankakee, Illinois at Ron's Drive-In when I was 14 years old and remembered all the muscle cars back then,"he said, “It only took me about 10 minutes to write it."
McCall and Monaco put together a backup band, went into a studio, recorded the song and released a CD that has become quite popular with PT Cruiser owners across the country.They're being invited to attend Cruiser rallies and sing the song. Thetune is beginning to see some radio play and it has been used for radio commercials and to promote the giveaway of PT Cruisers. It's even been used on Car Talk, the nationally-syndicated radio show.
     "The song has really turned into an interesting project for us," said Monaco. "Last year, we sold the CDs to the various clubs around the country. This year, they're asking us to be at the rallies. So, we're trying to find sponsors and we're attending as many rallies as possible."
     McCall,who cut his first album in 1978, has released two previous CDs:  One More and I'm Outta Here and Perfect Divorce. He says he was a "wandering minstrel" until he arrived in Florida and that he has come up with hundreds of ideas for songs over the course of his career.  "I've started hundreds of them that never were finished," he said. "Right now, I have enough of them done to do my next CD. My songs are about places that I've been and people that I've met. If I had never left Kankakee, I would never have had any songs."
     Monaco adds that McCall has a way with words that is a gift only to songwriters. "Bob can take a rusty old shovel and make a poignant song out of it," she said.