Hollywood Syndrome

    I picked this song to open up the album because of the message in its lyrics, which are a big part of my music. The lyrics have a definite anti-establishment tone to them, or more precisely an anti-musical establishment tone to them. It's essentially an American Idol protest song. I've long resented the fact that the music industry parades around an endless display of entertainment whores who would do anything in the world to become famous. Now, with American Idol, they've created a culture throughout the whole country where every moron that sings karaoke and gets a hand clap thinks its his God-given right to become a star! Fortunately for the rest of us normal people who think American Idol is ridiculous, the success of that show has started to cause a backlash against the music industry. More and more people are looking for independent music, and with the aid of the internet are finding it.

     The lyrics really speak for themselves in the song. I steered the song toward the outer limits of country with the guitar, and sang with a mock-country accent on my vocals as a tip of my hat to Nashville, TN. No other place on earth has produced so many non-talented and completely worthless "stars".

Taneytown

    Taneytown is the only song on the album that's not mine. Steve Earle wrote this one, and as one of my biggest influences, I felt it appropriate to include one of his songs. Taneytown is a dark, hard rocking song that I think fits right into my music. The structure in the song is the same as in Steve's version, which is on his 1997 release El Corazon. The guitar arrangements, and the addition of mandolin were my idea.

    As far as I know, Taneytown is a town in Western Maryland. I've never come across another Taneytown in all my travels. I'm not sure if this story is fiction or non-fiction, probably a little of both. Regardless, I think we created a pretty good version of this song that's a little different, yet at the same time remains true to the original version of the song.

West Virginia

    I spent a winter in West Virginia right before I hit the road as a truck driver. Every single word in this song is true. West Virginia really is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. The mountains, the rivers, the floral, and the fauna, West Virginia is nature at its finest. The state also has a reputation of being an inbred state full of hillbillies as well, and this is partly true. There are some very strange, backwards people native to those mountains. There's also a lot of good people there, and for the most part I have only good memories of West Virginia.

    One of the things that really stuck with me though, is the drug problem there. Oxycontin, also referred to as hillbillly heroin, and crystal meth are huge problems to the people of the Appalachians. Where I lived, the local pharmacy was broken into every week or so. Two guys even crossed a frozen river in the dead of winter just to get away from the cops with their pills they had just stolen from the pharmacy. What a lot of the addicts would do with oxycontin is crunch them up and inject them into their arms with needles, which is where the name hillbilly heroin comes from. As a result of needle sharing, hepetitis B was rampant in the county that I lived in. Most of the addicts I saw were also parents, so there was an endless cycle to this behavior.

    The poverty of West Virginia was also something that I had never seen before. I'm from a middle class neighborhood and it was shocking to see people living in a trailer with no running water in it. There's almost no hope for the kids that grow up there. A few make it out, some become decent citizens of the community, and the rest just slide into the same cycle of poverty that their parents raised them in, or in most cases, their mothers or grandparents raised them in. The teen pregnancy rate is also very high. There's a lot of 14 and 15 year old girls getting pregnant there. A 14 year old girl that gets pregnant can forget about having a normal life, much less having a good father to help raise the child.

    The poverty and the lifestyle of some of the people I came across in West Virginia obviously stuck with me. I'm not really sure what possessed me to write this song. I know I wasn't living in West Virginia when I wrote it. I don't think that I consciously set out to write a song highlighting the problems of West Virginia poverty, the song pretty much just wrote itself once I got going.

    Musically, West Virginia is one of my favorite tracks on the album because my Dad plays keyboards on it. I knew I wanted an extended jam on the end of the song, and my Dad had offered to play on a song if I needed him to. I took him up on the offer, and he came down to Chesnee, S.C. where we recorded his parts in Tim Lawter's living room using his mobile recording truck.

    Ronald Radford also stopped by and played guitar on the song. The middle solos, and the end solos on the song were recorded live with Ronald and my Dad swapping licks. Both of those guys are super-elite musicians, so it was cool for me to sit there and guide them towards playing what I wanted to hear. They went through the song once and then recorded their parts in one take, with some minor changes done afterwards.

    I didn't really think too much about recording with my Dad until Tim mentioned how cool he thought it was that I got to record with him because it was something Tim never had the chance to do. So, while I may have initially taken it for granted, I now realize it's quite the honor to have him play on not just one, but four songs on the album.

Something About the West

    I was listening to Radney Foster's song "Texas in 1880" when I wrote this one. Pat Green sings some vocals on that song, and I've been a big Pat Geen fan for a couple of years now. The night before we laid vocals for this song, Pat played a special acoustic set upstairs at Buffalo Wild Wings in Spartanburg, S.C. It's funny how the guy singing vocals on my song sounds exactly like Pat Green..... Mike Rogers is a great singer and did a great job matching my style and staying on top of my vocals in all of the songs I had him sing on. This song turned out to be one of my favorites, and I'm real proud of it.

    Lyrically I was inspired to write a song about the West because, as I mentioned earlier, I was listening to "Texas in 1880" a lot at the time. When I wrote this song, I had never actually been to Wyoming, or anywhere out West for that matter. I just wrote a story based off of things that I had heard I suppose. Now, four years later, I have a much greater appeciation for the song because I've traveled out West extensively. There's a real sense of freedom out West that you don't feel back East. The whole region is wide open spaces and it's easy to picture someone leaving the hectic city life of an eastern city and heading west to start a new life.

    I like this song because its lyrics ring as true today as they did when I first wrote the song about a place I had never been to. I don't believe I could write a better song today about the West if I tried. There really is "Something About The West."

Viking Story

    I wrote this song basically because I like playing solos in the key that I wrote it in. The song is tuned down a half step, as are most of my songs. I think I was jamming out to "Green Grass and High Tides" by The Outlaws when I wrote it. I always loved the middle solos in that song. When I originally wrote the song it was a little more laid back and less heavy than the final studio version. When I play it live it sounds more like when I originally wrote it.

    As for the lyrics, I believe that I was reading a book on the Vikings at the time. The Viking lifestyle has always fascinated me, I guess I can relate to their adventurous spirit. This song is basically a story from a Viking's perspective, sailing to lands they've never seen and so forth. Some of the lands they found were green upon arrival, but didn't stay that way, which is what the third verse in this song is talking about. Most of the Viking trips were centered around trade, so they set out for gold quite literally. The song is historically accurate, and is basically an overview of the Vikings many trips to distant lands and the sense of adventure that accompanied those trips.

Take My Hand

    There's not really any great story behind this one. The song is about no one in particular. I can't remember if I had the chorus or verse first, but whatever the case I knew it was a good song as soon as I finished it. I know it didn't take me too long to write, and it sounds exactly the way I thought it would when I wrote it. This is rare in a way because most of the time songs change in the studio when you start working on them and hearing different things. I love the guitar and organ solos on this one. I ran the Leslie on my Dad's organ solo, which was cool to me. Also, originally there were two chorus's on the end of the song, but when we went to mix I decided to cut one out.

    As for the lyrics , as I mentioned earlier, the song is about no one in particular. It could be about anyone I guess, and anyone's relationship. It's possible I was drawing on past memories when I wrote it . There's nothing deep or significant about the lyrics, it's just a good feeling song with good lyrics. The lyrics and music compliment each other well, and I'm happy with the way the song turned out.

I Don't Understand

    I've always felt that this is the best song that I've ever written. I remember that I was playing around with the chords for a day or two, but I don't know what inspired me to begin writing the lyrics. I may have even had a part of the chorus in my head first before I began writing the verses. The lyrics are very concise and written with a purpose though. This is a reflective song. It's my reflections on this country and my own self as well.

    The first two verses are talking about my hometown of Greensboro, NC. I left Greensboro at age 20 and haven't really lived back there since, though I've visited often. What I wrote about in the first two verses is how I began to notice how things seem to change every time I went back home. Once a person leaves home for the first time, home will never quite feel the same to them. I think the message is deeper now when reading or listening to the lyrics, than when I originally wrote the song. When I wrote the first two verses, I was just thinking about how every time I got off on the Holden Road exit off of I-85 to go home, there seemed to be more and more traffic, and it'd take me longer and longer to get home. Then, every time I'd go downtown, there seemed to be less and less people that I recognized. That's basically what the first two verses in this song are talking about.

    After I wrote these first verses, which came easily, I was stuck on where to go. I couldn't think of what to write next. I had the t.v. on at the time, and I remember the time period was during the build up to the invasion of Iraq. At this time before the start of the war, I was against the war because I knew that there was going to be a war. I knew Iraq had nothing to do with a so called "War On Terrorism," and I also have never bought into the notion that we even have a "War On Terrorism" to begin with. How can there be a war against a type of warfare? The answer is you can't, it's absurd. "Axis of evil?" "War on terrorism?" "Evil doers?" I mean seriously, who was writing this bullshit, George Lucas?

    After completing the third verse, I think that I can say that I wrote the first anti-war song in reference to the Iraq War. Now, it may not technically be an anti-war song because I never set out to write an anti-war song, but we sure could spin it that way anyhow, There have been hundreds of anti-war songs the past couple of years, but I think mine was the first one that was written before the war because I realized that war was imminent and it wasn't going to be a 3 week war either. Those planes I saw flying on t.v. years ago are still over there. I believe in my lyrics and I think that they ring very true today.

    As far as the bridge in this song goes, I think I had the music first, and there was really nothing in particular behind the lyrics, they just fit well with the song. The last verse is just talking about North Carolina and the summer breezes through the pine trees and different friends I grew up with. the chorus is basically an overview of the whole song, which is things that I was seeing and questions that I was asking at the time. I don't know how I came up with the "Na na na, hey hey yeah" part. I remember that originally I wrote "Na na na, yeah yeah yeah," but I changed that because it sounded to Beatlesque. But, even after this change, if one were to look at the lyrics without ever hearing the song, they might think that part of the chorus was a rip off of "Hey Jude," which it obviously isn't to anyone who's heard it.

    The mood of the song is a bit melancholy. The music and the lyrics fit together well, and I think the song has a unique feel to it with the 12-string guitar and organ playing a key part. To my ears, this is a very good song with a serious tone to it, and its one of my personal favorites.

Lonely Street

    I was alone in the mountains when I wrote this one. There wasn't a person anywhere near me, and there wasn't a person in the world that I felt like calling. I wrote the song on an acoustic guitar, and I remember thinking Dwight Yoakam when I started to write it. Dwight Yoakam is the king of lonely songs. I had the chords to the verse first, and once I got started, the song came fairly quick. I think I finished everything in an hour or so.

    There wasn't any particular girl in my life at that time, so more than likely it's a fictional reference to a girl at the beginning of the song. Everything else in the song is exactly the way I felt at the time. I sometimes wonder if Dwight Yoakam is ever really as lonely as some of his songs are. Whatever the case, here's another lonely song for all you lonely people.

Watch the World Go By

    When I was younger, I'd go over to my grandparents house out in the country, and one of my favorite things to do with them was sit out on the front porch and do absolutely nothing at all. I think it's a great old American past-time, sitting on the front porch and watching the world go by. Beyond this reference, the song is a work of fiction though. I made up the character based on no one in particular. There's actually a third verse to the song, but I cut it out right before we tracked it because I thought it'd make the song too long. Someday I'll bring the third verse to light, maybe on a live album or something.

    One of my sister's friends and I tried to write some songs together years ago, and I showed him this one to get some help on, but nothing really came of it. I've come to realize that I can't write songs with other people, and I've never really successfully completed any worthwhile song with someone else. To me, the more writers in a song, the less personal the song is, therefore the less authentic and real the song is. (Yes, this is a Nashville reference.)

Where I Belong

    This song is essentially a tribute song. It's a tribute to all of the bands and musicians, and in particular the Southern Rock bands and musicians, that have made their life being on the road. Lynyrd Skynyrd has toured every summer now for the past 20 years straight, and I think that fact is something that is never talked about. I'm not sure, but I think that has to be a record of some sort for a major act like that, even though band members have consistently changed with the passing of time. People like Gary Rossington become famous at such a young age, and have been on the road playing shows since the early 70's. It's the only life that he and Ricky Medlocke and Greg Allman and Doug Gray have ever known. What else are these guys going to do?

    The lyrics in this song are very true because I've been on the road myself as a truck driver and I know what it's like to call the road your home. It's taken a lot of lives, and broken a lot of relationships, but there's still nothing more romantic than being on the road.

    A lot of my closest friends have always told me that this is the best song that I've ever written. It's another one where the music and the lyrics flow together perfectly. There's some fine piano playing by Steve Keeter on this one. Every note that he played on it is perfect and I don't think that anyone could have played it better. Since we've recorded this song, Steve has been diagnosed with MS, so please keep him in your thoughts when listening to this one.

    This song is dedicated to Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Allen Collins, Leon Wilkerson, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Allen Woody, Toy Caldwell, Tommy Caldwell, and to all those who have ever lived on the road.