I've always wanted to be able to go into greater detail about the songs on "Clandestiny" than is usually practical during a show. It's easy to toss off a one-liner and then sing, and truly, the songs should be able to speak for themselves. But if you're curious about what inspired me to write about Breck Girls, or a river, or my new home by the Lake, this is the place to find out. I hope you enjoy the insights.

Breck Girls

Contrary to the belief of my fiddle player, Martha Murphy, I did not write "Breck Girls" just to torture her sleep. The Breck Girls are an American cultural icon from the 1940s through the early 1980s, created to sell Breck Shampoo. Over the decades, they appeared on the back covers of many womens magazines, and were the embodiment of wholesome American womanhood. In the 60s and 70s, they also appeared on TV commercials, all of which ended the same way: a still image of the Breck Girl would dissolve into a pastel portrait of the same model in her idealized setting.

A few years ago, I was talking with a friend about a woman with whom I was in a relationship. My friend asked me to describe the woman, and I said she was a "Breck Girl." My friend laughed, which told me she immediately got it. A few years later, my friend inquired how I was doing with my "Breck Girl," and I was struck by how deeply engrained some messages and images have become. When I started writing the song, I could recall vividly the TV ads, and how I reacted to them as a teen, and what they meant to me as an adult, even after the Breck Girls had gone the way of the dodo. I kinda miss them, actually.

Infrared

Some people come with baggage, whether they want to or not, whether they know it or not. And some people either help carry the weight, or contribute to it. Infrared is an appropriate metaphor for the friction that can ensue; heat you can't see, but can very definitely feel. There, was that cryptic enough?

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Sound Of I Love You

I didn't set out consciously to write a country waltz, it's just the way it worked out. I'm originally from Oklahoma, where country music is somewhat difficult to avoid, though it can be done if you work at it. "Sound Of I Love You" was written between a huge fight and an anniversary, and the woman for whom it was written didn't care for country music any more than I did, so after I finished writing it, I never played it for her. Years passed, circumstances changed, and I'm glad I finally dragged the song, and all the feelings that were wrapped up in it, into the light.

A Work In Progress

I started this song in 1986, during the waning years of Reagan/Bush, otherwise known as the Iran/Contra Circus. It seemed to me the US was in full-blown Hell-in-a-handbasket mode, and I needed to vent.  I only got as far as the first verse, though I knew I wanted the remaining verses to end with the word "scale," as the first verse had done. That first verse was published in the newsletter of the Unitarian church in Tulsa where I was a member (not a hard trick to pull off, as I was one of the editors), under the title "A Work In Progress." I wanted to write more, as I didn't feel like letting the new president, George H.W. Bush, off the hook, but nothing more would come. So I waited.

The Clinton presidency, for all its flaws and faults, was still a welcome change from the Reagan/Bush years, and I felt that the song might not need a conclusion after all, that perhaps America had turned a corner (is it obvious I'm a liberal? I didn't begin life as one, but I find, to paraphrase Shakespeare's Henry V, that "the elder I wax, the more liberal I become."). It would have been difficult to find an administration whose perception on the world stage was less arrogant than Clinton's.

But apparently, karma works. For Bill Clinton's domestic (that's lower-case "d") transgressions, George W. Bush has been delivered unto us, and suddenly, we're all tall in the saddle again. The last two verses of the song practically wrote themselves after the ascension of George the Second. September 11 was horrific for sure, and those responsible certainly should be held accountable. But civil liberties, personal privacy, and plain old common sense have all taken a beating the like of which none of us ever should have tolerated. So, "A Work In Progress" was completed 15 years after I began it, but the title remains the same, because it's not just about politics and politicians. It's about us, and the title still applies.

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In This Kitchen

When I was twelve, I wanted to play bass guitar. My younger brother and I had a Fender Instruments catalog, and we would cut out pictures of electric guitars, bass guitars and amps, paste them on cardboard, put twine straps on the instruments and turn our GI Joes into a garage band. I thought bass would be cool, and I thought my mom would agree. She, on the other hand, thought bassists never got the limelight (a certain Beatle notwithstanding), and that bass was uninteresting when compared to all the other instruments. But I was unconvinced, and really wanted that Fender Mustang Bass.

Christmas came. Next to the Christmas tree, in odd, triangular boxes, were gifts for my brother and me. My brother opened his first. In his package was a starter 6-string guitar. It wasn't electric, but it was a guitar. Lessons were promised, and he was happy (I think). It was my turn to open my big box, and I was thrilled, because I knew that inside that box was a bass guitar. Maybe not a Fender Mustang, but a bass nonetheless. Mom had heard me. I ripped off the paper, tore open the tape, got the top off the box, and came face-to-resonator with a Montgomery Ward 5-string banjo.

"Uh.. Mom?"

"It's a banjo! "

"It's a banjo. Mom, I asked for a bass."

"But this is better than a bass. Basses are everywhere. But you hardly ever see anyone playing a banjo."

And I thought to myself, "Why do you suppose that is, Mom?"

Lessons were promised, and dutifully taken. And I got into it. Not immediately, but Deliverance and "Dueling Banjos" had just come out, and suddenly, bluegrass was getting hot. I got into a bluegrass band in high school, but in the meantime had started to learn guitar, using the banjo finger picking technique that my Dad told me would surely work for guitar, and which I swore would not work, until I actually managed to do it. As my guitar prowess increased, my attention to banjo lessened, until by my senior year of high school I had stopped playing it altogether.

That is not what "In This Kitchen" is about.

"In This Kitchen," a song about a marriage falling apart, and employing the time-honored scene of a husband and wife having breakfast in the same room, but not really together, was written on guitar, and recorded in a demo session with my friend, Kurt Hanus. We recorded a tight three-part harmony that was reminiscent of bluegrass, and I knew at once that I would have to re-learn the banjo well enough to record a part for it. Nearly two years later, I had, and it's one of the things on this album of which I am most proud. Particularly because it allows me to acknowledge that Mom and Dad knew exactly what they were doing. all those years ago.

At any rate, that's their story, and they're sticking to it.

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Proving Voltaire Right Again

I was at a big warehouse store in the Lincoln Park neighborhood on Chicago's north side. I was queued up to leave the parking lot from a right-turn-only exit, and naturally, both of the drivers ahead of me wanted to turn left. There was only so much cursing at their stupidity that I could do with my 12-month-old son in his car seat in the back, but I was doing all of it that I could. "Those ######'s KNOW better," I screamed. Eventually, they got out (unlawfully), and I exited normally and pulled up to the intersection just in time for the light to turn yellow. More cursing ensued. I didn't run the light, though without my son in the car, I probably would have. It was that realization that made me stop cursing the other drivers, and reflect on just how hypocritical I had been prepared to be for the sake of shaving a minute or two off my driving time. "I know better," I told myself. And I had the genesis of this song.

When I got to the chorus after the first verse, the line that presented itself was a quotation: "Common sense is not so common." It's a well-known quotation, and I was sure either Mark Twain or Will Rogers had said it (Will Rogers would have been my preference; we Oklahomans gotta stick together). But imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered it was the star of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire, who had uttered the immortal line. Why was I delighted? Because here was the redemption of the French in the face of the G.W. Bush administration's break with France and other allies in the UN over the invasion of Iraq (Don't get me started. Saddam probably had it coming, but that doesn't mean we had to be lied to regarding the reasons why. The truth might well have sufficed. Too bad our president didn't trust us with it.). It was an "In your Face!" to the Republican drones in the US House who had managed to shove Freedom Fries down the throats of staffers on the Hill. What a huge embarrassment we've been to the world, lately (Say, Mr. President, just where are those weapons of mass destruction, anyway?) "Proving Voltaire Right Again," while a bit ungainly to read, was the perfect tag line for the song.

When I'm writing lyrics, I like to employ the occasional double entendre, just to see who's paying attention. There's one in "Infrared," for instance. The entire third verse of "Voltaire" is a double entendre.

Finally, after taking digs at other examples of common sense gone astray, I realized that I had to begin and end with myself, if the song was to be in any way honest. I think it's a songwriter's responsibility to tell the truth about and be fair to anyone who shows up in his songs, even when that person is himself. I hope anyone who knows me feels I've been honest and fair throughout.

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At The Headwaters/Where Wanders The River

I wrote the second part first. That's the secret. "Where Wanders The River" was written for a girlfriend, a woman very in touch with spirituality, very Earth-centered, and known by a name that included the word "River." Now, there are about as many songs about rivers as there are about trains and Detroit motor cars. What I wanted to do was to anthropomorphize the river in the song to the extent that it could actually describe who this woman was, as well as describe a watercourse. And I believe it does; at least, it did at the time.

"At The Headwaters," which appears as the prelude to " Where Wanders...," was written a few years later, and was inspired by one of my favorite places on earth, the Arkansas [River] Headwaters State Park in central Colorado, north of Salida. You can camp right on the river, where it's cold and swift, and river rafters float by, and trout fishermen do whatever it is trout fishermen do (hi, Jim!). "At The Headwaters" is played in D minor. When I was finishing it, I realized it could easily modulate at the end to A minor, which is the key in which "Where Wanders..." was written. It was kismet.

Plain Brown Wrapper

Ferris Bueller could take lessons from a guy I know, someone who always managed to do the minimum work required to keep his job, and who could be counted on to find every available loophole and defender when his own lack of respect for his job and his co-workers threatened to get him booted. A fellow who has more lives than a cat, and who, as far as I can tell, never did anything to earn more than the allotted one. Someone who could charm the birds from the trees, and talk people who knew better into handing him the keys to the kingdom. And who didn't seem to care what it cost those around him to support him.

*sigh* What a pity neither the song nor that description apply to only one person.

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Wish Me The Moon

I never intended to sing this song myself. I started writing it stream-of-consciousness style, but wanted to fit it within a specific form. The two methods are mutually exclusive, of course, so stream-of-consciousness went out the window, and I concentrated on the form. I also wanted to incorporate a couple of short musical phrases I'd had in my head for awhile. When I finished, I had a song I felt could be commercially successful, if sung by a strong female singer, a chanteuse. And I hope it will be one day. Meanwhile, here's the songwriter's version.

Some Of My Best Friends

When I decided to leave Tulsa, my home of nearly 38 years, in 1999, I had two possible destinations in mind. One was Colorado Springs, a beautiful small city nestled into the Eastern Slope of the Rocky Mountains, and a favorite vacation destination. The other was Chicago, a place I had visited for four days in the summer in 1997. I knew no one in Colorado Springs, and only two people in Chicago. What swayed me towards Chicago was a combination of factors: I wanted to live in a BIGGER city than Tulsa, one that was more culturally and ethnically diverse, and one that was much more tolerant than Colorado was turning out to be (Colorado's Amendment Two, which specifically forbade extending the benefits that married couples enjoy to couples of the same sexual orientation, was, in my opinion, a huge black eye for the state). The final deciding factor, though, was one of personal need. I knew I'd need Colorado occasionally to refresh myself, and if I lived there, I feared I would stop seeing what made it special to me. So I chose Chicago, and am still so glad I did.

When Matthew Shepard was beaten and killed in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, just for being gay, it suddenly seemed that the West, so spectacularly beautiful, was also appallingly homophobic, and that made me both sad and angry. [The good news is the people of Laramie have worked hard to overcome the stigma of having such an act take place in their city, and to spread a message of tolerance. The bad news is that one man intends to keep the message of hate and intolerance alive there. In God's name, wouldn't you know.]

The neighborhood I moved into in Chicago was the melting pot I had hoped for, and was also very well sexually integrated. All my neighbors were great, and I was happy to know them. What set off "Some Of My Best Friends" was a report in the papers of some new outrage or intolerance, and that, coupled with Shepard's death, finally got me to write what I was feeling. We've all heard the phrase "some of my best friends" used in a way that actually serves to denigrate and exclude more than it does to welcome and include, even though the intention might have been otherwise. In this song, the phrase and variations on it are heard fourteen times, and my intention was to overuse it to the point of taking the sting and cliche out of it, and make the listener actually hear the central message, that some of my best friends are people, period.

My wife, Sharon, and I contribute regularly to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an organization which works to educate both the public and governments, federal, state and local, about issues pertaining to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender individuals, and to lobby for their equal rights and equal protection under the law. We hope you'll consider lending your support.

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Lake Effect

I like to think up song titles, then try to write songs to fit the title. It's a fun exercise, and can often lead in unexpected directions, both for me, the lyricist, and you, the listener. One night I was having trouble sleeping, and I was playing the song title game in my head, when "Lake Effect" popped in. If you don't live near one of the Great Lakes, I should explain that "lake effect snow" is a phenomenon where great amounts of moisture gather from a Great Lake in the winter, and dump huge amounts of snow on the lee (downwind) side of the Lake. So northern Indiana and western Michigan get hit with it, as do Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo. Chicago gets a lot of snow, too, and we hear all about the lake effect.

But for me, and for the song, "Lake Effect" has an entirely separate meaning. I was drawn to Chicago from Oklahoma, where all the lakes are man-made, in large part because of the beauty of Lake Michigan on a cloudless July day in Chicago in 1997. Sure, I'd heard abut Chicago winters, and my friends in Tulsa thought I was nuts when I said I wanted to move to Chicago in spite of the blizzard that had just taken place there. But move I did. The song, "Lake Effect," is a reflection on the two most important and wonderful things that have happened to me as a direct result of falling in love with the Lake. And playing music isn't either of them.

But it runs a close third.

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