Composition and Lyrics
"Even Flow" features a funky riff by Gossard. The song was written in the key of D major, with Gossard performing his parts in open D tuning and McCready complementing it with a similar rhythm pattern in standard tuning. The recorded version of the song actually sounds slightly sharper than D major, with everything tuned up - accidentally or otherwise - around one quarter of a step.
McCready on the song:
That's me pretending to be Stevie Ray Vaughan, and a feeble attempt at that. Stone (Gossard, Pearl Jam guitarist) wrote the riff and song; I think it's a D tuning. I just followed him in a regular pattern. I tried to steal everything I know from Stevie Ray Vaughan and put it into that song. A blatant rip-off. A tribute rip-off, if you will!
The vocal line that appears in the main verse begins with a very prominent tritone interval.
The stark lyrics by Vedder for "Even Flow" describe the experience of being a homeless man. The subject sleeps "on a pillow made of concrete" and panhandles passersby for spare change. In addition to being illiterate, he may also be mentally ill, as he "looks insane" when he smiles and struggles to keep coherent thoughts ("Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies/Oh, he don't know, so he chases them away").
At Pearl Jam's March 28, 1994 concert in Miami, Florida at the Bayfront Amphitheater, Vedder introduced the song by saying, "I thought I'd throw in a bit of street education while you still have an open mind...Right across the street there's a little homeless community that lives under the bridge. You should just know that those people ain't all crazy and sometimes it's not their fault. This song is called 'Even Flow'."
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