explication

okay. so. making good on the promise. i lament that y'all (my lovely viewing audience of two) have probably picked the songs with the least interesting stories behind them to ask about, but nonetheless i shall give their backstory to the best of my ability.

#3: "you didn't warn me that we'd finished whatever this was before it could begin" comes from a song called 'detour,' and it is about a bartender that i very, very briefly dated. he worked at one of my favorite bars in NYC. i went there every monday for ages; he gave me free drinks, we flirted, eventually we went out on a date. it was fun, if a little odd (going out for a drink with a bartender? probably not the most brilliant idea i've ever had). but, it was a good enough time that we set a time to go out again. kind of. though we'd set an initial time, date and place, we didn't end up adhering to it, because he called three times to postpone it. this, naturally, sent my spider sense a-tickin', but because i'm delusional and like to believe the best of people, i showed up on the ultimate appointed date to the cube at astor place. in the rain, just to fully live out the cliche.

he, however, did not. and thus, by taking the pussy's way out of an affair that wasn't even an affair, he joined the pantheon of stars known as "the shivery light brigade of shame."

#8: "kind as vipers, soft as vises." this comes from 'reclamation,' which is as close as i'm likely to come to writing a girl power anthem. really, the only truly significant thing about that line is that i loved the aural double entendre that 'vises' made with 'vices.' i enjoyed that greatly. i wrote the song because i was fed up, as girls so frequently are, with work, boys, feeling helpless and crap. it was kind of a turning point, and remains to this day the only song i've written that was a rock song even when it was just me and the guitar. at least, i think so. now, with a band, it's a super rock and roll juggernaut. and really fun to sing REALLY FAST.

so anyway. those are the stories. probably not as exciting as you'd hoped, but i promise you--they translate much better to song form.