Intro to “Long Time Comin´”
´´This is for the mamas and the papas out there….trying to raise those babies….this is ´Long Time Comin´´….´´
Intro to “Black Cowboys”
´´Thank you, uh….I love, uh, I love appreciation but, uh, I don´t really need to be reminded of my name in the middle of a song actually….I´ve got that….I´ve got that one down pretty good myself and, uh….you can spare everybody else the (chuckles) the, the pleasure….this is a song called ´Black Cowboys,´ I wrote a lot of songs about sons and mothers….this is a story of a….young kid who lives in the innercity in the States….and his mother, who keeps him inside after school, he starts watching all these Westerns and she brings him home books on the black history in the West….and uh….it´s partly a story of, uh, what happens when that mother-child bond gets severed and partly a story of how we triage our citizens in America and decide, uh, whose dreams are worth living and whose are not, this is called ´Black Cowboys´….´´
Intro to “The River”
´´Thank you, when I was….I never wrote a lot of young songs, uh, love songs on my, on my early records, they´re a little hard to find but, uh, when I grew up, my father told me that all love songs were government propaganda, that were simply meant to, to trick you into getting married and having babies and paying taxes and, and all that stuff, which, uh, looking back on is possible, I mean sort of, I mean hey, there´s old trailers, they make you believe, they make believe they´re mobile weapons´ labs, is it any wilder than that? I don´t think so (chuckles) but, uh, I hid my love songs when I started out and, uh, this is one of the, one of the hidden ones….´´
Intro to “Book of Dreams”
´´Thank you….(?)….when I sort of got over my fear of, of writing love songs, it only took me about, uh, 30 years to get over that (?) and then I started to write and I wrote this song, which is a wedding song….I had two chances to get this song right myself, personally (chuckles) got it right the second time, alright (chuckles)….´´
Intro to “Point Blank”
´´Thank you….alright, let me see here….I haven´t played this one on the piano but, uh….this is a very special piano, I got this piano on eBay….and, uh, this piano refuses to fuck up, let me tell you, yes, it does, the piano is solid so I´ve got a lot of confidence going into this….we´ll see what happens….(starts playing, hits the wrong key) oops….they, they warned me about that one note, on eBay, it said that there´s, there´s a bad one down at the bottom, lookout for that one….I´ll start, I´ll start up a little higher, alright….´´
Intro to “Jesus Was an Only Son”
´´Thank you….I was, uh….I was brought up Catholic so, uh….back in the States went back to Catholic school and the whole nine yards….I don´t know, uh, so Jesus is my homeboy, uh, by default, basically, and it´s, uh….comes with the job description…. but I wrote this song thinking about what it would be like, uh, if you were Mary and Jesus was just your boy, ´cause as a parent you´re always….first and foremost you´re always trying to protect your children from harm or from, uh….but they have their own destinies ultimately and you let ´em go….uh….this is called ´´Jesus Was an Only Son´´….
(….) at his mother´s feet….so that first thing that shocks you….when your children arrive….is that unconditional willingness to do anything…to keep them safe….it comes as a deep and sudden shock because it happens overnight….Mother prays….
(….) shall pierce your dreams this night….now, if you figure that our choices are given meaning and weight by the things we sacrifice, by what we give up….the parts of life we let slide….I always figured Jesus had to be thinking….that Galilee was pretty nice that time of year….that there was probably a little bar down there that he could manage….and Mary Magdalene could´ve tended the bar….and they could´ve had some kids…and watched the sun fall on their faces….and feel….feel the breath in your lungs….and see the next day….and the next day…and the next day… and the next day…and the next day….in the garden….´´
Intro to “Leah”
´´We all carry the, uh, seeds of our destruction….it´s just kind of a….God´s joke, I guess, the nice part of the human package….actually that´s supposedly what we carry after we fled east of Eden, that was the deal, we could fuck up now, it´s up to us (chuckles) it´s a pretty good deal (chuckles) but you gotta be careful (chuckles)…this is a song about a guy that just comes down on the right side of that equation, ´with this hand I´ve burned, with this hand I´ve built,´ this is called ´Leah´….´´
Intro to “The Hitter”
´´Thank you….this is the, uh…..this is kind of the flipside of that song, I guess, the seeds of (someone: ´Bruce, we love you!´)….uh…the seeds of our destruction…this is a song about a young fella who leaves home and travels to New Orleans, becomes a champion but shorts, shorts himself, comes back and the whole song is a conversation he has with his mother through a locked door…Freud is smiling in his grave somewhere but, uh….this is called ´The Hitter´….´´
Intro to “Matamoros Banks”
´´Thank you….thank you….I wrote, I wrote this song as a sequel to ´Across the Border,´ in the United States, uh, every year hundreds of people die trying to get into the United States, across our southern border, they die crossing the rivers and crossing the mountains and the deserts, they die in the backs of vans….this is a song, uh, I wrote this song backwards….about a man trying to make that journey across the wire….the song, the first verse starts with the body at the bottom of the river into the walk across the desert into the man as he reaches the banks of Matamoros, which is the town across from Brownsville, Texas, this is called ´Matamoros Banks´….´´
| Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi. |
