The Downeaster "Alexa" (3:43)

“The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” is a song originally released in 1989 on Billy Joel’s eleventh studio album Storm Front. The album itself went to number one while “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” placed at #57 in the Billboard Hot 100. The song was included on Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3 album in 1997.

The song is sung in the persona of an impoverished fisherman in the Outer Lands and the surrounding waters who, like many of his fellow men, is finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet and keep ownership of his boat. The fisherman sings about the depletion of the fish stocks (“I know there’s fish out there, but where God only knows”) and the environmental regulations (“Since they told me I can’t sell no stripers”) which make it hard for men like him him to survive, especially with the conversion of his home island into an expensive summer colony for the affluent (“There ain’t no island left for islanders like me”). The lyrics reference Block Island Sound, Montauk, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, amongst other locations.

Alexa, the name of the fishing boat in the song, is the name of Billy Joel’s daughter, Alexa Ray Joel. Joel does in fact own a downeaster lobster/swordfish hybrid boat by the name “Alexa”, built on a Maine lobster boat hull. The “Alexa”, along with Joel’s other boats, call Sag Harbor, Long Island, home.