rockyourlyricsTell us more about your new LP “Soul Mine”….
Our first to be released on vinyl!
Because of that, there’s a definitive difference between the first and second half of the album. Side A mainly consists of rockers, while side B is primarily ballads.
Is there a link, lyrically speaking, between all the songs?
There is, albeit a loose one. The song, “Soul Mine” is basically the thesis statement of the album, “It’s been a long time digging in the soul mine, looking in the dark for something that shines.
I found a vein of gold and a vein of blood, I made a vain cry for a vein of love.”
And from there, the rest of the songs are displayed for what they are, gems or coal from the bottom of the Soul Mine.
How do you usually write your lyrics?
While driving, but I typically don’t “write” anything, I memorize it in my head. For some reason I see ink and paper as the bars of a cage.
Once the words are down in physical form, I find it very difficult to change them.
So I keep them in my mind where they’re free to transform until they naturally stop shifting. Then I know they’re ready to be sung.
When it was last time you wrote some verses?
Yesterday?
What does music mean to you?
Expression. The wind is music, the river, the earthquake, it’s all music, and it’s all expressing something.
We humans make music as well to express the human experience.
So everything from gravity to love is expressed through music. It’s universal.
What inspired “Mustangs”?
You’ll have to ask Robert Louis Cole, because he’s the one who wrote it. Robert is a good friend of mine who lives in Denver.
He spent his formative years hopping freight trains and learning blues guitar from hobos down in New Orleans, so I’m sure the song was influenced by his adventures on the rails, but you’d have to track him down to get the nitty gritty.
Do you remember the day you wrote “soul mine”?
Yes I do. I had already come up with the album art for the album and named it Soul Mine.
I had even picked out the othe nine songs to record, and while I had some solid ideas for it, the title track eluded me.
The band and I were playing the last of a very long stretch of Tuesday nights at a local bar.
The place was packed and rowdy.
As soon as we broke for set break, I felt the song in me, so I grabbed my guitar and ran across the street to the park. I waited three months for that song.
It took 15 minutes to write it.
And “ghost of a man”?
I wrote Ghost of a Man when I was 22.
I had just gotten sober and thought I’d stay that way forever. Most of that song was a projection of what I imagined life would be in ten years if I hadn’t stopped drinking.
Sadly, ten years later it all came true.
I’m sober again now, so I can sing it without shame, but it does mean much more to me now than it did when I wrote it.
Are you planning to be in tour soon?
I’m on tour right now! I’m in Belgium as I write this, about a third of the way through a European tour.
What is your biggest dream?
To be fully present in each moment.
Your favorite Sunday morning record?
Jackie Wilson, Reet Petite
Photo Cred: Laura Folden
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