Appeared on Alive





One of my brothers often gave me books to read. Mainly because it was abundantly clear that I really needed them...but also because he liked giving things that he would want to receive. He gave me two books on the West Virginia mine wars. I read them, and wrote this song within minutes of finishing the last page I think it was in my bedroom about a day or so before the concert where we were recording this record. I like the open tuning of the guitar and the real desperation of the lyric. Because some of the miners stood up against the National Guardsmen that were sent in to deal with the crisis, they threatened to charge them with treason. Huh? I am not a fan of the role Unions play in our current world at all – but they did play an important role at several points in our history.

Appeared on Alive





I traveled around Australia for 8 or 9 months and one of my favorite things was a very long trip across the Outback. It rarely rains out there, but every few years it rains so much that huge lakes form just a few inches deep. It happened while I was traveling. I wrote this song lying on my back in the bed of the pick up truck I had rented for the trip across the Simpson Desert. It was the middle of the night and I was looking at the southern sky. I am mostly grateful to this song because it makes me think about that night, and that trip. One close friend thinks this is one of the more interesting lyrics I have written. He does not like much so I guess that is saying something.

Appeared on Alive





The pun, 'crack her jack' for Crackerjack was a crude sexual reference, like getting beyond 3rd base. I know, I know, that is pathetic. We sold about 5 thousand of the cd Crackerjack right off the merchandise table at shows. I would sometimes feel a little guilty when I would here the person announcing us coming on stage and saying the name of the album. Sort of like giving the airport announcer a crude double entendre name for 'so and so meet your party at the gate.' Overall the song seems pretty average - but unlike other average songs, it has some really good lyrics at times I think. In fact, the line 'but you bend your soul when you bend your knee' really captures something about youthful arrogance and mature resilience that sort of resonates. As does the line ‘she had a way with her words and a greed you could almost taste.' We all know people like that…

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



To write songs, I would sometimes sing nonsense lyrics into the side of the acoustic guitar with my head bowed. If you sing only an inch or two from a curved surface, you really get a certain intimacy in the vocal. Plus, I think the bowing of one’s head can make one think a little differently. I wrote this song in about 30 minutes sometime in ‘92 I think. It was about my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife of more than 10 years. I would call her from the road after a show around 1 or 2 in the morning. Our schedule was such that we typically drove six to twelve hours a day for a 2 or 3 week stretch. She was always groggy, never remembered the calls, and always mumbled niceties like 'oh my lord’, or 'for heaven's sake.' Her eyes are super blue – and all three of our boys got the same ones.

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



Many people look to a grandparent as a hero. They have similar qualities to our parents and to us, but they are usually distant enough for us to recognize the good things and forgive the faults. My paternal grandfather was a real hero to me. I wrote several songs about him – this one after he died. I tried to remember details about his room; the ashtrays, the tangerine peels, the flowers my grandmother planted and made him care for. The chorus was an altered version of a song Matt was working on in the early 90’s. This song was never recorded on any cd. In fact, I was writing a lot of songs back then, and I would have forgotten this one had it not been for Ken Carey. Ken was our sound engineer, friend, and de facto consultant for more than 10 years. He often recorded shows straight from the mixing board. He mailed this one recently and it totally surprised me. There were three songs from that show that I had completely forgotten. I am really glad he helped me rediscover this one.

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



In an episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye’s eyes were damaged by an explosion while lighting a heater in the nurse’s tent. With bandaged eyes, he comments later that the hard rain outside sounded like ‘bacon frying.’ I know that a tired sitcom is a dumb source from which to draw inspiration for a song – but I never claimed to be clever. I was trying to write a song for a Joan Baez record (it never came close) – and wanted to write the perfect song of deep and funky erotic love. Rain on a tin roof does sound like bacon frying – and if you have never spent the night with your lover in a cabin with a tin roof, rain, a crackling fire, and some booze...well…you are totally missing out.

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



Years ago, I was talking to one of my brothers about several of my totally random ideas for new businesses. He laughed and said that when talking to me, he had to apply the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal. Of course, I had no idea what he meant – and he knew that. He explained that it was impossible to know what I was planning to do in the future and what I was involved in at the moment, because evening asking me changed the answer. Some people call that hyperactivity or ADD. You see, in Quantum Mechanics, The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal suggests that you can not know the momentum and the position of a particle at the same time. It is related to the ‘observer effect’ that by looking at something, you change it. The act of observing changes the observed – so…well…you never really know the whole story at the same moment. I wrote this song about him and for him. And yes, I know that having the word Heisenberg in a song is weird.

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



My paternal grandfather was Samuel Worthington Curnutte and one of my heroes. He was a welder from Eastern Kentucky/Western West Virginia. When I went to college, I did not see him as much. One summer I went to Elkins, West Virginia to a folk festival and had a teacher named Harvey Reid show me how to play finger style guitar. I went back to Tennessee and wrote this song about my grandfather. A few days after writing the song, I called Harvey Reid and asked him if I could fly up to New Hampshire to record it with him playing along. It was out of the blue, but just crazy enough that he agreed. There was a cottage on the ocean just over the border into Maine. Harvey and I faced the chairs into a corner because he said Robert Johnson used to record like that back in the ‘30’s. We used his DAT machine and played the song 3 times. This take was the first. It is pretty rough and natural, but I kind of like it because so was my grandfather. He was actually from Dry Ridge and Rich Creek even though I said Rush Creek in the song. Also, his mom was not named Cora Bell. That was his mother-in-law but I just liked the name better in the song. After several years, my grandfather actually came to a show in a concert hall with about 400 people. I introduced the song that I wrote for him and played it for him for the first time. The next day, I asked him how he liked it. Apparently, he did not have his hearing aides in and he never heard it. He said I did a good job anyway…

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



Most of the whole human experience sort of baffles me, but certain things seem downright absurd. Take for example the person who researches for days to determine what plasma screen to buy, but spends less than 5 minutes during the same time period reading a book to their child. I wrote this song in the mid ‘90’s and used the assumption that the Heavenly Host were as perplexed as I was about the strange behaviors of humankind. I made some people mad when I dropped the f* bomb in a quote that was supposed to have come from heaven. The concert where this was recorded prompted several angry letters. Ummm, okay. Thanks for taking the time to write a nasty letter?

Live at Common Grounds Charleston, WV



We were supposed to open for Kid Rock at dive bar in Chattanooga. Matt Maher asked me to write a lyric and melody in the key of D that could be used as an intro for one of out songs, Numbered in Billions. It was a great idea. I wrote this strange song, we played it, and it worked moderately well. We tried it several more times but never really pulled it off. I love lyrics that are more like poetry and less like song – although that distinction is often blurry. I wrote this in the van at a stoplight in front of a chicken restaurant in Nashville that is not longer there. I scratched it out on the back of my vehicle emissions test. It was written about two real people as if they were the same person. One was our drummer and one was a guy from high school.