what were you thinkin'?

We've all heard Dr. Phil utter this famous phrase. So real quickly I wanted to share what I was thinkin' when I wrote the songs on "I'll Drink to That!". "$of an Education" is a phrase I heard Keef mumble during a drunken interview. He was refering to a mistake he had made and I thought "That's a cool way of putting it!" and it stuck with me for a long time. I even tried to get Dan to help me write it on one of my trips to Nashville. He thought it was stupid so one day when I was beatin' the hell outta my Telecaster the whole thing just kinda popped out ..like a cuddly little baby. "Daddy had a Wreck", you may have heard me say before was my answer to "Crawlin' from the Wreckage". Mission accomplished, 'nuff said. "Killin' down in Dillon" came about when I was reminding myself about how kids from North Carolina used to go to Dillon, SC to get married. Back when I was growing up, you could get "hitched" there (to your cousin...just kiddin'!) at 15 years old. Not sure if it's still that way. Wanda is such a beautiful hick name! It just took off from there. "Boyfriend 2" I wrote on a train coming back from NYC. I rolled it around in my head for about 4 hrs. so I would be sure not to forget it. Singing it to myself over and over and over... "Safety First" is such a corny phrase. It was just beggin' me (but very politely I might add) to write a song about wearing rubbers. I played drums left handed/footed to insure a really dumb beat! "Nastiest House" I'm afraid really was written about my house. Not all that stuff about the cockroaches and rats and food on the table from last week but it DID start when I went in my kids room and couldn't see the floor. They had gotten a little out of contol so I just started singing the first line and the situation just got nastier as I wrote it. "Rock and Roll Girlfriend" started when I was thinkin' of what my ideal girl would be. "She never thinks that the music's too loud" pretty much says it all. That's cool. "Nya Nya Nya" I wrote with Big Al. It started as a "who cares what you tell us, we're gonna do what we want" kinda thing. It took a turn for the stupid when we spit out the lines: "We'll use words that nobody understands...like..nya nya nya nya...."VERY Third grade of us. Thass why I love writing with him. Anything goes as long as it's stupid enuff! Those are my favorite kind of songs. "37 Miles in Reverse"...Speaking of stupid! I was tryin' to write the most bizarre Bo Diddley song ever, when I wrote this, obviously after too much caffeine. I think it was based on a friend of ours (I know his name but I ain't gonna tell you) who was kinda crazy, like REALLY crazy, not drunk but CRAZY! I'm pretty sure this song started when somebody told me that he had driven around he entire Beltline (6 lane expressway around the city of Raleigh) in reverse. This blew my mind, and I took it a step (or a mile) or 2 further in this song. "Mr. Busdriverman" is one of my favorite songs ever. Just the name itself cracks me up, I don't know why. But that's what started that ball rolling, just saying Mr. BusdriverMAN made me laugh! "Church Folks Comin'" is a true story. It was a Sunday afternoon and 2 church ladies were walking the neighborhood, knockin' on doors to invite everybody over to the church. They were one house from ours when I said "Screw that!..Honey, you gotta deal with these ladies comin' down the road, I'm gonna take a drive through the country!" And that's what I did...and wrote this song. They were just leaving when I got back. I got the "Thanks a lot!" eye from Grace. "Stay Away from Your Heroes" I wrote with Al. We were just talkin' about how we had heard some of our heroes were real pricks and how we didn't wanna ever get to know them. It's just better that way.
















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