“Bucket” is a great old Hank Williams tune about a time when, like Frankie from the folk tune “Frankie and Johnny,” you could go down to the corner saloon and buy a bucket o’ beer.

“Dark Hollow” was learned from Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead from the album “Reckoning.” Anybody who is skeptical about the Dead needs to hear “Reckoning” in its entirety.

“Paranoia Blues” was inspired by a repeat MUNI rider who I had the displeasure of observing on several occasions.

These were the first crop of songs recorded after those on Grandma’s Album and I was nervous as to whether or not I would be stuck playing “Twisted” and “Hey Bartender” every night for the rest of my life. I guess I was afraid that my best songs…

“Spiritual #1” was written about an escalator at the 16th Street/Mission BART station that always had a pile of some unknown substance gurgling at the bottom landing. Beware the “Slide of filth.”

“Troubled Times” was written for Johnny Cash to sing. It is a partially true tale, like so many good ones. It features the existential question "Who first coined the phrase good grief? Such a phrase is beyond belief...."

“Tremblin’ Earth” was inspired by a early morning earthquake that set off my stereo and caused me to fell my trembling abode. It was very biblical, lamentation, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and Mingus’ “Blues and Roots” spilling out…

My friend Craig Bourne wrote the line "Too much crying too much thinking, not enough laughing not enough drinking" and it flipped a switch and the rest of the song emerged a few days later.

“Me and My Pieces” is another BART song. I rode BART to work for about seven years.

Evan Williams is whiskey (a knock-off of Jack Daniels from Kentucky” while John Curtis is neither a whiskey or a knock-off, although you could use the same preposition in his epithet.

"There are a series of Wayne's chronicled in this song. The Wayne's in question, Von Der Mehden, Slate, and Hussey, have most assuredly never shared the same room simultaneously. However, it gives me great comfort that I have created a space for…

I wrote this song a long time before I ever wrote it down: it lived in my head for nearly a decade before I recorded it in 2002. I am happy to dust it off and let it breathe again. I hope you enjoy.