COME UNDONE
While finishing Not The
Same, I edited out a verse that had a line I just loved: "When
all is said and come undone." I wanted to write a title track to Venus In Retrograde, but it just wasn't coming to me. "When all is said and come undone" seemed to say what I
wanted to say in the title track so I sat down to dink around on my guitar while watching Oprah. (I'm a dreadful multi-tasker, I'm always doing several things at once.) I wrote half of it in one sitting, then
returned later that night to finish it.
"The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know," is a quote by Pascal that
helped Tom gain some clarity when he was struggling with how I fit into
his life.
AVALON
In May 2001, Tom went on a road trip to Wyoming and Montana. He and I had
fallen in love while we were both in long-term relationships with other
people, and he desperately needed to find a space of clarity in order
to make a decision about how to proceed with his life. I dubbed his
journey a "vision quest" and wrote Avalon while he
was gone as a kind of prayer for his healing and safe return.
The analogy of Arthur returning to Avalon for
healing was obvious (we always had this Arthur and Morgan thing going
on between us), but the imagery in the lyrics that came to me didn't
seem to make sense. I thought Tom had gone to Illinois and visions of
high plains and canyons were coming up, not midwestern cornfields. I
struggled with the lyrics, trying to get them to go where I thought
they needed to, but they resisted. Finally one night, Tom called me
from Montana. Suddenly, the colorful, lyrical landscape that had been
pouring out of me made sense.
Most of the lyrics were written at an open mic at Angie's Coffeehouse in
Lakewood. The "She" in the bridge of this song refers to the Goddess or
Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend. And She was indeed keeping an eye
on Tom throughout his journey, most notably in the guise of a raven
which left him both awestruck and a little unnerved.
Despite some unbelievable "signs" on his journey, Tom returned from his trip
resolved to remain in his former relationship. Obviously, the story
doesn't end there, but as far as Avalon goes, that's the end of it.
Met man of dreams, lost man of dreams, gained song.
SWEET THE OPEN ROAD
Sweet The Open Road
was written when I first began performing at open mics and
coffeehouses. I was still new to performing and still pinching myself
to be sure I wasn't dreaming. I couldn't believe that after all these
years I was actually doing the thing I'd always dreamed of doing. I was
elated and terrified each and every day.
I wrote the line about "the demons of compromise" after a discussion with Tom
about how living your life according to the expectations of others can
lead to feeling like you've compromised your soul and lost sight of
yourself. My use of the word "home" in this song denotes being at home
in your soul, knowing yourself and being at peace there. No amount of
travel or running will bring you there. You have to journey within
yourself and once you find that place, no matter where you go you'll
always be home.
For me, this song conjures images of beginning a long road trip into the
unknown, leaving before dawn when it's darkest, but knowing that the
sun will soon rise and the road that is dim and a little scary now will
unfold before you until you can see for miles. The bridge of the song
is a thunderstorm of self-realization, where one acknowledges how hard
they struggled to deny their truth. Once the self is embraced, the
struggle ends. The storm passes, the sun breaks through the clouds
complete with rainbow and you're on your way... home.
HERE WITH YOU TODAY
One night, a couple weeks or so before we were married, I told Tom that everything
I'd ever gone through in my life was worthwhile because it brought me
to him. As soon as I said those words, I said, "That should be a song!"
An hour later, it was.
I wrote the lyrics in the bathtub and they emerged as little one-line snapshots
of my life. Once I'd written a page full of verses, I grouped them in
order by age reference (child, teenager, and adult).
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN YOU AND I
MAKE IT PLAIN
RADIO WAVES
Jim Harris is a singer/songwriter friend of ours from Austin, Texas. When
Tom and I met, Tom was playing with Jim and Michael Shay in a band
called The Permanent Transients (formerly The New Texas
Troubadours). Jim invited me to sing a few of his songs whenever
I was at any of their gigs so I became a sort of permanent "special
guest." These songs of Jim's had to be included in Venus In
Retrograde because of their direct lyrical content as well as the
nature of how and when they came into our lives. Tom likes to say
that Jim was raised by wolves, but that only paints half the
picture. He is a stellar, intergalactic poet, hitchhiking his way
through the cosmos... who happened to be raised by wolves.
WHATEVER IS
The melody and first verse of Whatever Is came to me while I was killing time at our friend Steve's
house in Evergreen, while Tom rehearsed with Steve's band, Nightwing. Forest fires were raging across Colorado including a couple not far from Evergreen. I like to use fire imagery in my writing (I'm an Aries,
after all), but I can honestly say that the fire references in this song were inspired by actual fires.
Not long before I wrote Whatever Is, I told Tom that someday I wanted to try to write a song with
the same kind of vibe and drum beat as Richard Thompson's
'Cooksferry Queen.' I liked the "train beat." To my surprise, the
Universe tossed me a melody that went perfectly with that beat.
This song is about change, it's necessity and our inherent fear of it. Once I
realized that was the topic, I wanted to have some kind of musical change in the song. It was my brilliant idea to take it up a step on
the last verse. That meant that I'd just written a song that called for chords I couldn't play. It took me months to get to the point of
actually being able to play my own song.
TRUE NORTH
True North is the first song I ever wrote (with the exception of lyrics I wrote in
high school). And of course, it's the longest song I've written. I
guess after being silent all those years, I had a lot to say. The story
behind this song is, you guessed it, long. In a nutshell, I met my
favorite band, Great Big Sea,
in May of 2000. The principal lead singer of the band, Alan Doyle, got
me to sing a little bit of a song for him at the pub, ending my career
as a closet singer. A few kind words of support from one of your
musical idols can go a long way. I hung out with the band that night
and sat in on a little song circle. It killed me to have to pass the
guitar because I couldn't play a lick despite owning a guitar since I
was 5 or 6 years old. All night I kept thinking, "This is the life I
always dreamed of, but I let the years pass by and now it's too late."
But it wasn't too late. I decided it was time I quit being frightened
and started living... fast. The next day, I picked up my guitar and
started playing.
So when I sat down to write my first song, I thought I should write about that
experience and the great gift Alan gave me. Just a few words of
encouragement and my life was changed, or rather I had the impetus I
needed to change my own life. I figured that if I couldn't come up with
a song about an experience that was so important to me, I had no
business writing songs. Consider it an internal challenge to kick off
my songwriting career.
What resulted was a song that the listener will assume is a love song. And
it certainly can be if that's how one relates to it. It implies far
more awareness between Alan and I than existed on a conscious level. It's more of a retelling of the energetic and spiritual connecting of
two souls when one unknowingly inspires another to find their truth. Alan would probably cringe to know this song was in any way about him.
In fact, he probably remembers little about our meeting, including me. It just goes to show the impact we can have on one another and not even
be aware of it.
The Universe has a rather odd sense of humor. When I asked for a musical
collaborator to come into my life by the end of 2000 (yes, I set
reasonable time limits when I pray for things because the Creator has
no concept of time as we know it and, as I've said, an odd sense of
humor), I was more than a little shocked to find that he looked a lot
like Alan Doyle. That opinion was cemented when Tom went to his first
Great Big Sea concert and spent the evening being mistaken for Alan. One fan even insisted that he sign her CD! (Alan later told Tom that
his first request for an autograph was the same sort of situation in
which he was mistaken for someone in another band.) Obviously, when I
fell in love with Tom, this song began to take on new meaning as he
became my musical mentor and supporter.
I'm still a huge Great Big Sea fan and I recommend that anyone who likes
Celtic-flavored music, or just a rip-roaring good time at a concert
check out this band from Newfoundland. Just don't tell Alan that you
know someone who wrote a song about him.
I must add a note of thanks to Marcy Baruch
for her support and inspiration. She was one of the first people I
played True North for when it was still a work in progress. She suggested a change to a
piece of the melody on the chorus that really helped it evolve. Thanks,
Marce, you're an angel!
SPACES IN BETWEEN
The process for Spaces In Between was very different than the songs that preceded it. Up until this time, the songs just kind of came to me, mostly at one
sitting. They were done in a matter of a day or three. But this song took 8-10 months and was written in pieces at various locations. I
wrote one verse at Conor O'Neill's Pub, one at Red Rocks and one at La Dolce Vita Coffeehouse. Countless other bits and pieces which were
later edited out were written in other places.
Perhaps it was because I wrote much of the song when it looked like Tom and I
would never have a relationship beyond friendship and when things
changed it was hard to put myself back in that grieving place of
lamenting about what might have been in order to finish it. I think
it's the darkest song I've written thus far, because it speaks of the
past with regret and the present is filled with longing. There's no
looking ahead, no inkling of light at the end of the tunnel.
REASON TO BELIEVE
Our freedom to be ourselves is constantly curtailed by the limiting beliefs
of others and ourselves. This song is my somewhat angry response to the
pressures, attitudes, expectations, and opinions of others.
Just because society believes that things work a certain way doesn't mean
you have to buy into that. We all create our own reality whether
consciously or unconsciously. Often when we see someone breaking some
perceived rule, we are angry with them and either want to prevent them
from succeeding or want them to pay a price for their rebelliousness.
It is the instances where someone does what we cannot allow ourselves to do that
we get angriest. We are the lobsters caught in the bucket who grab the
lobster about to escape and drag him back into the bucket with us. If
we could only learn to bless those with the awareness to create what
they desire in their lives, and congratulate them for breaking out of
the cage of what is accepted as possible, we would create more room for
miracles in our own lives.
I hope listeners will take something from Reason To Believe,
perhaps a realization of how they've bought into untruths about
themselves and how they might find and embrace their own genuine
awareness of self.
NOT THE SAME
I began Not The Same during the summer of 2001 and it took me two years to finish it. I came
close to tossing it in the trash out of sheer frustration on several
occasions. But the closer we got to recording Venus In Retrograde,
the more I realized this song's importance in the thematic landscape of the CD.
Not The Same is
about death and rebirth, about losing everything and finding yourself.
