Original country folk rock, blues and spirituals.

12 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, ROCK: Folk Rock



Details:
The songs for this album were written or at least started to be written in 1988. This was the year after we left the mountain. We moved to Spann Hill then down to Steubenvilleâa caretaking job and a cheap trailer. This was, I guess, a transitional periodâa kind of decompression or maybe a compression squeezing us back into civilization. We had been on the mountain six years.
1. The first song on the album is Ainât Nothinâ Happeninâ. We had made a trip to Indianapolis and at an intersection there, I saw a young man sitting on a low wall in the hot sun. He reminded me of myself at that age. This is one of the songs I finished up for the recording. It didnât really work till I hit upon the crotch idea. At that point, it became a prayer.
2. The second track is Close to the Bone. Maybe this should have been the title of the album. Anyway, itâs gone through some changes but was essentially done in the summer of â88. Iâve been singing it since then, alone and with various ensembles. It was on an earlier recording. The song takes a quick look at things that got to me and maybe hurt but seeing them as âsteps of gloryââanother biblical concept.
3. Coffee with Jesus is just what it isâa song about contemplation and the value of relating to the creator. This is another one started in 1988. I presented it to a couple of Scribblerâs, who didnât like it so I put it away till I started working on this album in 2004. Iâm fond of it especially with Galeâs accordion in there.
4. Deborah is about my relationship with my wifeâthe part of it that took place in the 1980âs. I think I began to get what writerâs call my own voice while learning to sing this song.
5. Iâd gone camping with my boys and one of their friends down by Lake Cumberland. A storm came up right at sunset with thunder and wind. I crawled into the tent while the boys fell around on the rocks and wrote the words to this song--Down to the River.
6. She Wants a Flush Toilet is of course my big number. Itâs been the most requested over the years. Itâs a love song and a protest song. And, next to farts,apparently thereâs not much funnier than toilets and the thought of pooping outdoors.
7. I Heard a Woman Holler was developed as a riff off of the hollering woman in a neighboring trailer there at Steubenville while I sat in the shed behind the poke plant out back of our trailer. It must have been getting on toward fall. I played it that year on stage at Big Hill.
8. I Know Weâre Gonna Make It was conceived as a big epic piece. When I finished it 16 years later, it came in at two verses and the shortest epic on record.
9. Mind Control is about the tendency of popular culture to crucify, hang or otherwise devour its heroes. Itâs happened more than once. The people want blood.
10. Praise the Lord. Sometimes while we lived on the mountain, I would go around to the Teacup Cliffs where I could see down into Tennessee, the Smoky Mtns in the distance and the trees moving slowly up the holler. Even then I would often be focused on my own ambitions.
11. I first sang Red Bud Blues in an open D tuning. It was not the cheerful cosmic number you hear today. Itâs another song about the struggle between beauty and pain.
12. Walking with Jesus was the working title for the albumâessentially a walk about the neighborhood at Spann Hill with a joyful noise chorus. I hope you enjoy it.