Appeared on CrackerJack





Matt Maher (The other half of C&M) is responsible for most of the lyrics. Even though we both liked the song, we never really played it at any of the hundreds of live shows that followed this record; don’t know why. The melodic and stylistic changes I made were few – but they moved the song towards an eerie feel and a sort of lush tonal wash. Nothing earth shattering, but somehow a song that keeps you coming back. We recorded it at Mike Clute’s studio in Nashville called Mid Town Tone and Volume. The idea of flipping through the channels was a passing notion – something to emphasize the boredom and loneliness of the lyrical voice and to emphasize the line ‘but my picture tube is about to go.’ We thought we would never get a series of sound bits that were odd enough, and cool enough to work. But we took a microphone into the lobby of the studio where a TV was set up for video games. On the second time flipping through the channels and recording whatever chanced by, we struck gold and found the “always glad to hear of a man who…” quote from The Devil and Daniel Webster. The movie tells a Faust-like story of a man who sells his soul to the devil for 7 years of prosperity. Bet that guy was pretty lonely too.

Appeared on Rumble of the Ages





It is weird I guess, but of the hundreds of songs that I wrote and recorded, this lyric is one of my favorites. There are really only a few notes in the melody and I guess it is a stretch to even call it a song. I wrote is sometime around ‘91 or ‘92. I had all sorts of environmental and social worries – the kind that you have in college. I suppose some of it was well founded, most of it misguided. The first verse is really a litany of the topics in my head, with a play on ‘hot’ equating to global warming. Homelessness was an issue (the shackless and forlorn) on everyone’s mind. The green seas are the rain forests in Brazil that were being burned. The hot house was the planet. The big old bag of dimes line cracks me up because my father likes to stitch leather and had given me a pouch with quarters for the glove box and I still have it. Bill Clinton was running for the Whitehouse and the line about him lying sort of seems prescient knowing what happened later with Monica. The second verse talks mostly about the tech revolution that was just about to explode. I called the tech revolution the ‘Rumble of the Ages.’ I still entertain the idea of writing a book about the tech revolution and calling it ‘Rumble of the Ages.’ None of us really had a clue how loud it would get. But the ‘mess of ones and zeroes’ really has ‘consecrated’ information.

Appeared on Think Again






I have done many dumb things in my life, but one night in college was an impressive display of stupidity. I was very drunk and acted cruelly to some friends. Just being a dumb kid. Whenever I pass by the memory, my stomach flops over and I wish I could take the night back. It must have been 1987 or so. I wrote this song in less than ten minutes. I never changed a word or questioned any part of it. Every detail in the song relates exactly to that night. I really love this song and still rank it as one of my better songwriting accomplishments even though I know it is not commercial at all. The lyric is solid except for when I warp syntax to make the rhyme 'over which I had no choice.' But overall, the melodic structure, the haunting lyric, and the chord progression give me a sense of satisfaction. Until recently, I was reluctant to think anything I wrote was very good - but this is pretty good.

Appeared on Rumble of the Ages





Scott Case was (still is I would say, though we have lost touch) one of my best friends. He and I were English majors as well as fraternity brothers at Wake Forest. After graduation he was working as a consultant for Mackenzie and I was trying to be a traveling poet. He sent me a note where he jokingly used all the names he could think of for what I was trying to do, bard, scop, minstrel, and troubadour. The word troubadour stuck in my head for some reason. I wrote this song the same week he sent the note…and have never even mentioned this to him or anyone. I never intended for it to be a duet, even the lyric about wanting to raise a child was supposed to be from the same voice as the lyric about wanting to see the world. Both of those things were in me then, as they are in me now. But I was playing In The Round at The Bluebird Café in Nashville one night and heard this woman named Christina Albert. Her voice sounded like Emmy Lou Harris. A couple of weeks later, I looked her up in Texas and asked her to come to the studio next time she was in Tennessee. She and I had lunch at a place near music row then went to the studio to record. I had a jumbo Taylor 12 string that was rosewood and I really liked the dulcimer chime it had it open tuning. We sang the some on the same microphone and the version on the record was first take. I once thought that having children and living an adventurous life were mutually exclusive. It was one of the many things I have been wrong about.

Appeared on CrackerJack





I was in Spain in 1987 and there was this Portuguese girl who was drinking Sangria and eating tortilla de patatas at a bar. I guess it would be better not to add much more than that because the song is intentionally vague. Meeting an enchanting girl on a trip far away from home literally and figuratively is an intoxicating thing. Sometimes it is more intoxicating when you do something about it, and sometimes it is more intoxicating when you do not. I wanted the song to have a forlorn and lush feeling from the lyric and the vocal. The duo Kennedy Rose added angelic, breathy, pants at the end that are flat out sexy. I love the fact that 2 lyrics in the song are nearly perfectly ambiguous. 'I caught the train in Barcelona and she got off just past Madrid I spent 3 hours trying to find her, and 2 years wondering why I did" Was it because the guy found her and had 2 years of regrets because of it? Or, because the guy never found her and regretted not looking harder? The other lyric with intentional ambiguity is: "I've run out of my Sangria, they say you shouldn't drink alone, but I don't seem to have another, and I don't feel like walking home.' Another what? Woman? Drink? This was one of the songs that I was asked to play in a large outdoor amphitheater when I was a New Folk Finalist at Kerrville Folk Festival down in Texas.

Appeared on Rumble of the Ages





I was flying to Oslo, Norway I think or somewhere in Europe. I had bomber jacket that my father had given me for my birthday a couple or years prior. Some flight was delayed and I had to sleep in a random airport. I folded my jacket under my head as a pillow and sleep next to a column in the terminal. The next morning I woke up and someone had stolen my jacket from under my head. I was glad that my jacket was the only casualty, but it really felt weird to know someone has literally moved my head to steal something in the middle of the night. Later that same year, I was in a train station in Madrid. I had just returned from a really bizarre trip to North Africa and was completely out of money. No ATM’s of course so I was checking the change dispensers of pay phones. I remember the feeling of my hands in my totally empty pockets. Those two experiences of the stolen jacket and the empty pockets were so strong, that I have never forgotten them. I wrote this after coming back to the States. It is really about a dark time in my life, and the two darkest memories that I had at the time just crept their way in I guess. Being under the gun is bad enough, but wandering there is even worse I think.

Unreleased Song



The Capitol Records deal we signed ushered in some good things and a few not so good things. One of the best things was that I got a chance to try and write songs for major movies. Our publisher would courier scripts from Santa Monica over to my apartment in The Valley. I would wait until night, then read a script over and over again. This song nearly made it into the Kevin Costner movie For Love of the Game, but since our record was delayed in coming out, it lost out to a song by Semisonic. Best I can remember, the script called for a song to play as Kevin Costner’s character left his girlfriend’s brownstone house one night. He was a legendary pitcher in the twilight of his career, hoping to pitch a perfect game, taking stock in his legacy, and wishing that his father could look down and see him play one more time. This version is just a loose demo – I cupped my hands over my mouth to make it seem really intimate – almost like an inner monologue.

Unreleased Song



When the Capitol Records deal fell apart, I was determined to leave the music business completely. Most people say it can not be done – that the music business sucks people in until they are too old to change. But in one week, I sold nearly all my studio gear, all my guitars except for 1, and tossed everything that resembled music into a dumpster. I started a business the same summer and never looked back except for occasional memories. When my oldest son started to talk, I took out a really low budget recorder and tried to capture his first words. That same night, I went into the basement and started playing guitar and singing nonsense words into the mic. I recorded about 5 hours of ramblings. This 2 minute clip was some of the nonsense – but I liked it when I heard it later. The lyric ‘tear up your DNA now, everybody needs a little start again’ was more than just a mumble – it was what I was going through. By the way, my Remedy back then is still with me, even though I am sure she occasionally regrets it.

Appeared on CrackerJack





This song was supposed to be a joke. The melody sounds derivative, even though I can never identify the exact song with which it shares common elements. But its humor belies the youthful exuberance so many people have in the music business. So even though I wrote dozens of similar dumb songs, I guess this one made its way by luck to a record. It was only supposed to be a demo, and the harmonica kept dropping on the music stand - or rather was thrown on the music stand. I think we laughed more than what is actually on the recording. By the way, I grew up around two wealthy families who lived on their ‘own cul de sac’ – the road was even named for one of them. When I saw a television special on the strange sense of ‘wealth’ that Elvis had, I somehow equated it with people who like to live on their own dead-end street. Come to think of it, I now kind of like the idea of living on my own cul de sac – not sure what that means.