1) Evangeline
Written 3 / '86
Jamie was playing a couple of chords I liked, real slow. I took my guitar out to the yard and started playing the same chords five times faster, and added a third chord where I sang out, "I have seen Evangeline" for no reason that I noticed. Later I went to the library to read Longfellow's poem to find out what on earth that was supposed to mean.
2) Bicycle Rider
Written 3 / '00
Wrote this to play at a memorial service for a friend of mine, Adam Pellettiri, who died on St. Patrick's Day. It's about his life, and maybe those of artists in general.
3) Blame it on Eve
Written 1 / '89
I was thinking in terms of something a stripper might use for her routine, something that illustrates the odd sense a stripper--or any woman, I suppose--might feel of being ogled with wide-eyed awe and yet vague disrespect at the same time. The song means to convey no disrespect to the Lord, whom I truly believe has a lively sense of humor, though some of His people may not.
4) Nervous
Written 2 / '93
I was visiting some people that made me uncomfortable. I started fooling with the guitar as we were sitting around the living room, and came up with this.
5) Karen Calls
Written 8 / '96
Karen was someone at the job. The rest is speculation. The voice of Karen is my wonderful niece Heidi, who loves talking on telephones to her friends all over the world.
6) I Can be Abused
Written 2 / '87
Frustration is a rough thing. Is it possible to buy your way out of it? A tale of angst and America, and how one man's desperate need can be another's opportunity for exploitation.
7) Awkward Angels
Written 7 / '98
Was staring out the back door after work, drinking a beer and fooling with a little run on the guitar that became the chorus. I started thinking about some people I know, and built around it. Maybe there can be "miracles" if you'll allow them to happen. Not everyone will.
8) A Member of the Rabble
Written 6 / '84
My roommate was watching a black and white movie about Jolly Old England, and as I walked through the living room Queen Elizabeth made some ugly, dismissive remark about "the rabble." "Watch it, sister," I told the TV. "Those are my people you're slammin'!" Over the next couple of weeks I put this song together while walking around downtown St. Paul doing errands for the job.
9) Pyramids
Written 1 / '82 - 1 / '94
I went over to jam at Mark and Marty's one night, and they said they had a new song. It was incomplete, and kind of ragged, but interesting and fun. Years later I dragged it out of the past and tried to give it a little more structure and fill it out some. Ironically, I did it at the job.
10) Sam Walton
Written 7 / '96
I had a few days off work for the 4th of July, but the car was unusable so I just got a pile of books from the library and settled in. Among them was "Sam Walton: Made in America." Wasn't he though. Mark suggests I should add another verse where Sam is reincarnated as an abject laborer in a Chinese factory. Good idea!
11) Hey Man
Written 4 / '85
A friend of mine gave me some tapes of "Caribbean" music. I think I tried to squeeze all the styles into one song. I was living in an attic on the West Bank at the time, and felt somewhat, shall we say, alienated. Sometimes you do.
12) Everything Ends Up Just the Same
Written 9 / '97
Based on a true story from when I was bartending in Comfrey in 1993, combined with some of life's other "issues" that persist like addictions.
13) Damn it All!
Written 8 / '98
At the time I was jammin' around with Casey and Adam somewhat regularly and I wanted to write a song with a repetitive structure so they would quit complaining about complicated structures. I wrote the first couple of verses on napkins at the bar. Then the band started up, so I went to a different bar. And no, this is not about my own father in any way whatsoever.
14) Favorite Cow
Written 6 / '81
Mark and I were trying to hitch a ride outside of Deer Lodge, Montana. We had arrived there in the back of a pickup so we had not seen the signs that read, "State Prison. Do not pick up hitchhikers." Spent an entire day watching cattle graze, which led to this. See also Comrade Hoffman's poem, "The First Cowboy Speaks" in the Bosso Poetry Company section.
15) Viola
Written 10 / '00
Just a story about bittersweet reflection on those other lifetimes that might have been.
16) Easter Island
Written 5 / '01
I came home from the job crabby and wound up. I seized the guitar in a frenzy. I combined that wild energy with a mysterious image of mindless self-destruction that struck me as a fine metaphor for the world. I found out later that all the heads on Easter Island face away from the ocean, which renders the line "eyes of stone that watch the sea" incorrect in fact. If this were journalism instead of songwriting the line would need to be changed, or I would have to find someone else to blame.
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