THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS!
Here are a few of the stories behind the songs. Some don't really need an explanation. They just "are." But here are the tracks and then a few of the stories behind why and how they were written.
TRACK 01: "Tomorrow Land"
TRACK 02: "Missin' The Delta"
TRACK 03: "I Don't Wanna Know"
TRACK 04: "New Woman"
TRACK 05: "Monday Morning"
TRACK 06: "Angry Blues"
TRACK 07: "I'll Be There"
TRACK 08: "Fair Weather Friends"
TRACK 09: "Amazing Grace"
TRACK 10: "Star Spangled Banner"
TRACK 11: "Dharma"
TRACK 12: "Lordy, Lordy"
TRACK 13: "No place On Earth (Like Mississippi)"
TRACK 14: "I Wanna Disappear"
TRACK 15: "Restless Soul"
TRACK 16: "One Beautiful Day"
TRACK 17: "In Dreams"
TRACK 18: "Tinkie Mae"
TRACK 19: "Bad, Bad Day"
TRACK 20: "All Strung Out"
On Track 07, the song "I'll Be There" is for my husband, Jay. It was our first Valentine's Day together and we had been dating 6 months. I knew I loved him but I was determined not to tell him first! Finally, I decided I would write it in a song and put the words "I Love You" at the end of the song and see how he reacted. He actually told me he loved me the same day, before I played the song for him! So it's a sentimental song for us. It's a tradition now that I write a new song for him every Valentine's Day. That was the first one I wrote for him though!
On track 08, the song, "Fair Weather Friends" is about friends I used to have and had to let go of. It was a place I worked at for 11 years as a counselor. There was a big embezelment from administration to the tune of a lot of money and they had to have lay-offs to make up for the loss. They laid off about 500 people, some right before their retirements! I was one of the lay-offs. Of course, I was angry and my other co-workers, whom I knew as close friends feared for their own jobs so they cut off contact with the ones who were laid off and angry. After contacting them later, I guess their consciences bothered them so I heard every excuse from, "My computer crashed" to "I lost your phone number", etc. etc. I heard a lot of, "I'll be in touch with you now." Of course, that didn't happen. So through that experience, I learned who my true friends were and found it therapeutic to write a song about it. That's why on the CD insert, with the "thank yous", I put "To My All-Weather Friends", the ones who stuck by me.
On track 12, the song, "Lordy, Lordy" was inspired by a situation where I saw a friend who had gotten very drunk, sat down and said, "Lordy, Lordy I'm so depressed. Ain't got no woman." I immediately thought, "That would make a good song!!!!" So I wrote it.
On track 13, the song "No Place On Earth (Like Mississippi)" was actually written on the spur of the moment! I was playing a gig. The next act didn't show up or was late so I was asked to keep on playing. I started making up chords and lyrics right then and there (which is why some of them don't rhyme!) and to my astonishment, everyone loved it and kept requesting it. The show was video taped so I went back and did the song again exactly how I did it at the gig! Now it's one of my most requested songs!
On track 14, the song, "I Wanna Disappear" deserves the most explanation, I think. It was inspired by a book I read about Jim Morrison. It was an awesome book and portrayed him as a lonely person who couldn't seem to stay out of trouble, was banned from booked shows, got high and drunk a lot and had even made the comment many times that he wanted to disappear. He talked about faking his own death, which is why rumors circulated for years that he wasn't really dead. I originally wrote the song, saying HE wants to disappear but it just didn't seem to fit. So I changed it to I wanna disappear. I was afraid people might think after listening to the song, that I was suicidal or getting high! It was almost banned from the CD for that reason. However, a friend of mine encouraged me to go with it anyway.
On track 16, the song "One Beautiful Day" was written the day after my favorite pet passed away. I've heard many times before that people actually write sad songs about their pets but portray it as a song to a person and somehow everyone can relate to it. This is what I did. The part in the song where I say, "We'll walk to the light at the rainbow's end," was inspired by the poem, "Rainbow Bridge" about pet loss. Toward the end, when I say, "I hear your whisper in my heart," this phrase was inspired by a place where I bought a locket. It is a site that sells things, such as lockets, for beareaved pet owners. The store is called "Whisper In My Heart." I played it completely unplugged, just me and an acoustic guitar. I didn't lay down any other tracks. I did the song all at once. I thought it would add more "soul" to the song that way. My mother's side of the family is Assyrian. So at the end of the song, I had an Assyrian poet, Robert Davood, translate a prayer into the Assyrian language for me. I knew that no one else would understand it but as long as I did, it made the song personal and passionate, like a prayer through song.
On track 18, the song "Tinkie Mae" was written after a friend and I read a newspaper article about an 81 year old woman who got arrested for buying pot. When the reporters asked her what her plans were for when she got out of jail, she replied, "Go get my pot!" She obviously didn't see anything wrong with this. We thought it was so funny that I wrote a song about it. I actually had recorded a different version of this song for a recording class I took at USM under Dr. Panella.
