If you ever went off somewhere far from home, and it changed you, you were probably equally excited about and fearful of coming home. You wanted everything to be the same as before, but you knew it wasn't really possible. Time and circumstances have left their mark. This is the basis of The Day I Come Back. It could apply to soldiers coming back from war, or an astronaut coming back from space, or anyone coming back home after college, or… what's your story?
Every guy has seen a beautiful girl and known that he had absolutely no chance with her. I was normally too shy to even talk to her, so this song is about me, but also an infinite number of other dorks. Now its funny when I think about it. Well, a little bit.
Teach me to Fly is about my daughter Kat, going away to school, and being so badly missed here, especially by her mother. There's a bond between mother and daughter that is unlike any other. When you look at your grown-up kids you can still see them when they were 2, 5, 10, 12, 15, 18… it's all one big swirling memory of their lives from the beginning. If you don't have kids yet, you'll know what I mean later.
As We Go is the only song on this album that I wrote long ago, but I completely changed it around to have a Caribbean feeling. I like the African and Indian drums. I had a little bit of a sore throat when I sang this one, so it's raspier than normal. I need to stop gargling with rusty nails.
True Love was meant to be a blue-eyed soul paean, since I love that sound. Some people hear George Michael; others hear Hall & Oates, or Elton John. It's all good. I like the energy of R&B, and the brightness of the Philly sound, so I did my best to recreate it, writing a song with a simple story about a pair finding true love. Did anyone ever write a long about love before? I'll have to google that and find out.
That Summer after high school can be a rough one if you don't know what you're going to do with your life, as in the song Already August from a previous album. But it can also be a great time full of joy and teen-aged misadventures, as you will hear in this song, Every Night Was Friday Night. I hope you can relate to it. But I hope you never drove your car into a tree and broke your lip. That hurts.
The idea that Time goes by and there is no getting it back is nothing original, but that doesn't make it any less relevant to every human being. I didn't want to be sappy, but rather to be poignant and light-hearted at the same time, if that's possible.
There are plenty of people who run their mouths and not their brains, and one day I just had to write a song about it. I wanted it to be punchy and fun; not nasty or mean. I might have gone over the line in a few places, but it's still a fun song. Crank the volume up for this one. That guitar solo is about the best I can do. It makes me feel good to hear it.
I was noodling on the acoustic guitar and came up with the verse music for Spotlight. I was visualizing walking down the middle of a neighborhood street at 4 am, when there is almost no sound at all, and no cars. You get a different feeling from a familiar place, which is strange, and the silence lets you think about everything going on in your life. And that's when the rest of the story unfolds, with the kind of big chorus that I like.
It Happens Once in a While is the last song that I wrote for this album, and it just came to me a few days before I wrapped up production. So I delayed another week so I could finish it. I don't even want to try to describe what these lyrics mean - find your own meaning in them. These might be my favorite lyrics of all of my songs ever.
Light Up and Go Boom was supposed to be on American Merman, but I couldn't make it work with the rest of the songs, so I held it off for this album. I like the positive energy and bounce of this song. It's loaded with world percussion, which provides a rich texture. I think the meaning of this one is obvious.
As soon as I wrote this story song, She Would Not Bow Her Head, I knew that I wanted it to be the last song on the album. There are a lot of places in the world where women are treated horribly. For shame. Disrespecting women doesn't make you a bigger man, if makes you a pathetic little fool. This song is about every woman, near or far, who struggles against adversity and still holds her head high. Her strength and resilience should make us all proud.
I hope you like these songs, and want to hear them over and over again. Thank you. Grant
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