The stories behind the songs

• Bet It’s Not Raining in Santa Fe – back when we were both living in Dallas, TX, my friend Steve Harvill came back from a trip to Santa Fe, handed me some song lyrics he had written, and asked me if I could write some music for them. I wrote the music and a few additional lyrics, and this song was born.
• Open Invitation – I have enjoyed dancing the two-step on occasion, so I wanted to write a song along those lines. I somehow strung together a bunch of gaming metaphors and came up with this song.
• The Wisdom in His Eyes – I was inspired to write this song after seeing Gordon Lightfoot perform as he was a bit past his prime. Lightfoot was one of my greatest influences and inspirations, and I had seen him many times when he was at his peak. I tried to paint the picture of an aging troubadour who was still captivating and whose influence would live on.
• Above the Waterline – I spent six weeks doing response work for EPA in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and many of the images from this song were from my personal experiences or from first-hand accounts of folks who survived the storm. When I began writing it, I went back to the first image I remembered driving into the city in September 2005 – the waterline that was left on every building from the flood waters sitting there for nearly three weeks.
• It Could Still Be True – this song has a unique place in my songwriting experience, as it sat on the shelf unfinished for about twenty years. I had written the first verse and most of the chorus, and I really liked it, but I felt boxed in by the somewhat complicated rhyme scheme I had come up with. I would go back to it periodically, but I was not able to take it further. Then, a few years ago, I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway. Something about the descriptions and examples of Hemingway’s writing style made me want to go back to this song. The next morning, I finished it in about 90 minutes.
• Made to Last – this song was inspired by my many visits to Picher, OK, the former hub of the Tri-State lead and zinc mining area which produced much of the ore for the munitions used by the Allies in two world wars. I had also visited several other former mining towns around the country, so I tried to tell the story more generally, as I had seen many similarities among such towns. I wrote the song to perform at the Earth Day 2000 festivities in Dallas, TX. I later recorded it with the Alan Munde Gazette, and we made it the title song for our 2008 album.
• Should I Take a Chance Tonight – I generally get phrase or a line of lyric as a starting point in writing a song. In this case, the descending melody line came to me out of the blue as a fully-formed verse melody with no lyrics, so I worked to fashion lyrics which fit the melody. I had performed it solo on occasion, but had wondered how it would sound as a duet. So Steff and I give you the duet version here!
• Write Me a Happy Bluegrass Song – when my wife Susan and I got together, she was new to the bluegrass world, and she frequently commented on all the songs about death, dying, and disasters. After hearing a couple of murder ballads during a faculty concert at Camp Bluegrass one evening, she passed me a note which read “write me a happy bluegrass song.” By the end of the camp, I had come up with this ditty.
• East Texas Rain – I got started on this country waltz about unfulfilled love during a very lengthy rain delay at a bluegrass festival in Nacogdoches, TX many years ago.
• The Things That Troubled Harry – This song is about my paternal grandfather, Harry, who died long before I was born. After my own father died, I learned a lot about Harry from his obituaries and the recollections of my late Aunt Jean and other family members. I tried to stay factually accurate about milestones in his life while also adding some embellishments to try to explain his behavior.
• Made for Each Other – I wrote this song for my son Tim’s wedding to Carrie Andersen in 2018, based on observations of their relationship. Hopefully it will have some universal application to others as well.
• Home Again – I played in Billy Joe Foster’s band for about 8 years. This song is based on Billy Joe’s life story, although I think it rings true for many of us. Billy Joe liked the song, but didn’t want to sing it himself, so we recorded it with the Alan Munde Gazette on our first album in 2004. It has also served as the theme song for my weekly bluegrass music radio show on KUPR-LP in Placitas since 2022.