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Picking the songs for the recording sessions was pretty easy. At that point, I'd only written a handful of songs. There wasn't real musical or conceptual criteria for choosing the songs. Really, it was just the ones that ended up being judged good enough to record. I picked Calypso Danced, You Take My Breath Away, Things'll Get Better, Ballad of a Dead Man, Don't Go to Jaco, and Hold On. Plus another song that didn't end up on the final recording, Gypsy King.
I also wanted to cover a couple of songs that kind of represented where I was coming from musically at the time. I chose a childhood favorite of mine, Gentle on My Mind, written by John Hartford and made famous in the 1960s by Glen Campbell. I also picked The Journey by my friend Steve Voorhies, a song that we all fell in love with when he brought it to the project. And finally, I recorded the novelty song Plastic Jesus for my friend Michael Schlefke, who shares a love for Paul Newman's rendering of the song in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Here are some of my thoughts on the songs that are on the "Where the Truth Lies" CD ... Calypso Danced | I'd wanted to write a song about Hurricane Katrina for a long time, but I didn't want it to be exploitive. I'd been reading some first-hand accounts of the storm and its aftermath and it just seemed so pointlessly devastating. For some reason, I thought of Calypso, the siren that led Ulysses to dash his ship on the rocks and become her prisoner. Her controlling the weather and the thoughtlessness about the consequences reminded me of the press coverage of the storm. | You Take My Breath Away | This song was an easy choice. I wrote this one afternoon for my wife. It's probably the most literal and autobiographical song I've written. Lyrically, what happens in the song is pretty much how it came to me as I sat in our garden and thought about her. Musically, I had been trying to learn a chord progression out of a book. I misread a couple of the changes, and this is how it came out. | Things'll Get Better | I got up one Sunday morning and there was a Bruce Springsteen concert on TV. Practically the whole band was centerstage strumming acoustic guitars, playing D and Bm chords over and over. I went over to my home studio and decided I was going to write an acoustic song with D and Bm chords. Pretty original, huh? When I got over to the studio, I started strumming the chords and then the phone rang. It was my friend Greg, who was in treament for cancer. We had a nice chat, and after we hung up, I got a call from another friend, whose wife was just starting treatment for breast cancer. After hanging up with him, I decided I wanted to write the song about the struggles we all go through and the hope that gets us through. | Ballad of a Dead Man | I guess this would be my Long Black Veil, if I could in fact write anything that good. I'd been reading Joseph Campbell's book "Hero with a Thousand Faces" about his monomyth theory. I wanted to write something that told pretty much every story, but rather than making it about someone's life and death, I decided to make it about someone's death and rebirth. I'd been working through the chord changes and stumbled on the riff that dominates the song. When making the demo, I added the pizzicato strings with my synthesizer. George Coyne, the producer suggested the slide part that completes the main riff. | I Dream of You | This was the only song I came to the project with that was already complete. I wrote this song about fifteen years ago for my brother after his wife of twenty-eight years died. The whole family was devastated because we knew how much they loved each other. Obviously, it had a to be a blues song. And so, again, rather than coming up with anything on my own, I turned to one of my influences. This time it was the Derek and the Dominoes "Layla & Assorted Love Songs" album. Lots of great blues jams to inspire. | Don't Go to Jaco | This song really just started as kind of a joke. I'd gone on vacation in Costa Rica with my family, and we were travelling all around the country. We wanted to go to the beach and we'd heard of Jaco, a big tourist destination. Our driver, Wilson, suggested several other beaches, but suggested that we don't go to Jaco. We insisted and made him take us there anywhere. It wasn't really that bad, just kind of commercialized. Plus, since prostitution is legal in CR, the nightclubs were filled with prostitutes. So, when I was writing the song, I thought I'd just poke a little fun at myself for not taking Wilson's advice. | Gentle on My Mind | I've always loved this song. My friend Scott Culver turned me on to it when we were kids in the 1960s. John Hartford said that he wrote this song after watching the movie Doctor Zchivago. And he said it's success changed his life forever. Rumor is it's the most recorded Country song. Regardless, I like it's musical simplcity and the great hobo love song imagery. | Hold On | I was so inspired by the lyrical imagery of Gentle on My Mind, I wanted to try writing something like that myself. The lyrics for this song came from thinking about a couple desperately in love with each other but not able to stay together. I was watching Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstien," the scene where they're in the graveyard and Marty Feldman says, "Could be worse ... could be raining." So I figured I'd add some rain to the song just to make the situation worse. | The Journey | This is just such a great song by Steve Voorhies. He brought it to the project with just the chord changes and a riff that ran throughout the song. We did a demo recording of it in the home studio right way, even without any real arrangement or lyrics. Steve came back the next week with the lyrics and everything just clicked. It's a really fun song to play, and it's kind of fun and trippy to listen to. | Plastic Jesus | Another song from my childhood, this one highlights some of the ironies of faith. In Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman plays the song with total sincerity when he learns that his mother has just died. Even though the song is a novelty tune, his performance conveys a real honesty about mixed feelings when it comes to the death of a loved one. I tried to give it the most honest rendering I could. |
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