Let's face it, folks: sometimes your musical entertainment is just too painfully clear. One sometimes would prefer the edges of reality to be softened a bit. Perhaps what you need is a blur of words and mumbles. It's worth a shot. This is my second album release of 2015. The first, "Slow Healers" got some fanfare. This one, I'm sneaking in because much of it is perplexing to say the least. One listen to "Donkey Boy" should convince you of that. The upside is, I was really having fun putting this stuff together. I hope that comes through. Here's a little track-by-track analysis: 1. Penitent Blues: a nice mid-tempo plea for forgiveness not necessarily aimed at anyone in particular. You know who you are. The truth is, we all have regrets. Most of you weren't as dumb as I was when you were younger so you don't have to write songs like this. I like the snazzy organ. 2. Coming Down in Flames, Part 1: I came up with the chorus of this song while wandering around in Sarajevo in 2014. I liked it. I tagged it onto some existing lyrics that I had laying around and let it rest. But that fall, I needed a song for a recording session with my friend Terry Hann and so I sat down with the chorus and wrote some new verses with a slightly different rhythmic feel. We took a stab at recording it but the session fell flat. As I began building the tracks for this album, the song came back and I liked the line "A blur of words and mumbles..." as a title for the collection but couldn't decide between the two sets of lyrics. So I recorded both. This is part one. 3. Wise Blood: Flannery O'Connor is, hands down, my favorite fiction writer. She is one of my favorite personalities of the 20th century, to be honest. That puts her in the company of Harpo Marx, John Lynch and Ken Hensley. Her first novel, Wise Blood, was my introduction to her work. I found a beat up copy of it in a used bookstore in St. Paul. It blew my mind. Here, in song form, is the story of Hazel Motes and his Church Without Christ. Can you feel it in your veins? 4. Five Dollar Shake: My son Dallas once had a band called Five Dollar Shake. It's a reference from the film Pulp Fiction. I liked the phrase. So I wrote the song. I like the song. I also like shakes. Chocolate is my favorite. But I don't like to pay five dollars. For five dollars, it needs to be a hell of a shake. 5. Hell or High Water: OK I admit it. I'm a dark futurist. Things don't appear to be going well, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe it's just me. The question is who and what will we, each of us, be — given that reality? 6. Donkey Boy: Well here's a confession for you: I am doing these recordings on a shoestring. I can't afford a drummer. So rather than use some robotic drum machine, I use pre-recorded loops. I'm not alone. It happens more than you think. Some time back, I purchased a collection of percussion loops called "Toolshed Percussion" ... one of the folders full of sounds in that set was called "Donkey Boy." I used that set of loops as a basis for a rhythm track and the words are a collage of the names of the other folders in the set. It cracked me up. Sometimes songs don't mean much of anything. Sometimes they just bubble up out of nowhere. 7. You Can Come To Me: This is a bit of an enigma. This could be God speaking. It could be a hand reaching out and offering grace. Or it could just be some words I wrote. As with much communication between sentient beings, how you take what you hear is always up to you. This is one of several songs that were recorded for the album "Slow Healers" that, in the end, were left off that release. So those of you who have Slow Healers can add this to that list if you want to be sticklers for completeness. 8. Love Gone Bad: I have always liked the sound of words as much as the meaning. Words themselves have rhythm and melody to them that is pleasant to hear or that can move someone in a way that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words. Back when I first started to write songs, I sometimes just wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style that was more about the sound of the words than about communicating a message. I liked playing with words and images in a humorous way back then, but I was far too serious in my teen angst to turn those delightful little romps into songs. Now, I can. In the meantime, I find these characters: Loose-lipped Lena, Tow-headed Tony and the rest to be fascinating. And who is the guy in the blue jeans? 9. Coming Down In Flames, Part 2. See (2) above. This is the second set of lyrics. So now you have a frame of reference as to what can happen in the wild wilderness of songwriting. 10. Strongman: Ultimately, the strongman will fall. Honestly, I am looking forward to that day. 11. Apalachicola: Ok re-read (8) above. Same thing applies. Seriously... can anybody SAY the name "Apalachicola" and not hear music? I intended this song for another collection, entitled "Exiles"... but I thought it had more in common with "Donkey Boy" than any of the songs in that collection. So here it is. Like all these songs, there is truth and fiction. Sometimes truth IS fiction and sometimes fiction is way too true. Whatever I'm trying to say there, this song is a fictional truth. More or less. 12. Cinema Paradoxo: After all the words and mumbles, I thought it would be nice to go out with something wordless. Or maybe something unspeakable. Who knows. There are some moans... I suppose that's something.