Jim Femino sings ‘My America’ is gone. I know how he feels

Donald Trump wants to “Make America Great Again.” Jim Femino was way ahead on that idea, as I learned when he performed “My America" on my show Thursday night.

Jim actually wrote the song more than 20 years ago. Now it's exploding on social media and seems more relevant now that ever.

Femino, who also wrote “Just Got Started Lovin' You” for James Otto (a song that topped the Billboard Country chart in 2008), and who was introduced by Toby Keith as a “local” boy when they performed together at the Tweeter Center, used to play all over the Jersey Shore.

It reminds me of an early '70s song by Cashman and West song called “American City Suite” that addressed all the people moving out of the cities to the suburbs. It's still impossible to listen to this without shedding a tear.

When you're a 15-year-boy dragged kicking and screaming out of Union City where you had more than 50 friends within five years and five blocks and the run of the town to a place where there were only a handful of kids that were as angry as you were with being transplanted, you yearn for the “good old days.”

The older you get, the better the “old days” become. In fact I remember “back in the day” hearing Carly Simon singing “These are the good old days” in her song “Anticipation” and trying to keep that in mind as I struggled with the process of growing up. Not really sure if I ever completed that process.

“My America” brings those feelings to light on a grander scale and perhaps if we keep remembering the good things about the old days, we can, as Trump says, “Make America great” again. If it doesn't happen, we still have them in our hearts and in Jim's song.

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