Midnight Shadow

- notes -

Barfly - The working title for this one was “Barfly Meets Leaving Las Vegas.” It began as a meditation on Mickey Rourke’s and Faye Dunaway’s performances in the movie, Barfly, and then synapsed to the question, What if a couple of raging alcoholic brawlers chose to stay in Las Vegas, rather than leaving it (Nicolas Cage, Elizabeth Shue), as they found the ambience compatible? Certainly Charles Bukowski, on whose life the movie Barfly was based, would never have taken Ben Sanderson’s (the Cage character’s) way out.

Krakatoa - There’re lots of ways to say goodbye. Sometimes there’s room for irony. And logic.

Sweet Tea - This is a true one-chord blues (it never leaves E minor) inspired by Buddy Guy’s album, Sweet Tea, which he recorded at Fat Possum studios in Mississippi, trying to get the Northeast Mississippi blues sound. I started out trying to get the right sound for the electric bass. I got it, then created a bass line, and wrote the song around that. Eventually, I decided I didn’t like the arrangement, which was heavy on electric guitars, drums and bass guitar, so changed it to a jazz blues with an electric upright bass.

Fat Ladies - I took my cat, Luna, to the vet one day, and had to sit there waiting for two hours. For some reason, most of the reading materials lying on the tables for clients were fashion magazines. (Maybe because it’s France.) There were two rather hefty ladies waiting there with me who were perusing this literature. One of them was a city lady, who clearly took her cues from these journals; the other was a farm lady, who just as clearly didn’t, but was looking at them nonetheless. I started writing this song then, and finished it when I got home.

What’s Real - Regarding the chorus, I knew that teaching Descartes’ Dream Hypothesis for 35 years had to be good for something. About the verses, should the title be “I’m in Love with a Schizophrenic,” or do these words characterize every real relationship? And are those options mutually exclusive?

Snakey Love - This is a single-entendre piece that I wrote back in the early 1980s, inspired by my wife, Katy, on the one hand, and by my son’s herpetological interests on the other, interests that had us occasionally sharing the bathtub with an 18-foot python. I gave it a Bo Diddley rock treatment when I wrote it, but tamed it down and John-Lee-Hookered it here.

Too Drunk, Too Ugly, Too Old - How many guys are as clueless as the singer in this piece? This song is the “country” iteration in my Pachelbel Project, in which I tried to see how many different styles I could come up with based on the chord progression in Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Telephone - This was my first attempt at writing a blues song all on one chord. I didn’t quite make it; there’s a quick IV chord thrown in. I think I got the blues part right, though. How would you feel if you called up your lady, had her pick up the phone live and tell you no one was home, and then commence with a litany of all the men she’s kissing off, and doesn’t even mention your name? This would be such a downer, it called for a Hollywood ending.

Talk to You - This is another product of my Pachelbel Project, this time more of a folk/blues. I’ve always heard that women sleep with men in order to talk to them, and that men talk to women in order to sleep with them. I guess the singer here’s an exception.

Midnight Shadow - This one was written about my cat, Luna. I think only the second verse might suggest to normal humans that the subject is feline. Of course cat lovers everywhere will recognize their own pets in all the verses.

I Need Your Love - I originally wrote this to showcase a new electric guitar, a PRS-SE One, so-called because it has only one control knob, volume, and one pickup, a screaming soapbar placed next to the bridge, with the consequence that it has a tone that can flay you. The effect worked so well that listening to the song was exhausting, truly painful for anyone but extreme metal freaks. So I re-recorded it with a kinder, gentler instrument and more sedate solos. Like Telephone, it’s almost a one-chord song, but with a quick IV chord thrown in.

Over - This was the first song I wrote in the Pachelbel Project, a sort of rock anthem. Lyrically and musically it’s a bit of an anomaly among the other songs here, but, hey, maybe by the end of the album you’re ready for an anomaly. The real challenge on this one was coming up with a chorus that was obviously a chorus, while still sticking to the same chord progression as the rest of the song.