Wicked Gift
 

Stained Glass Scars

about | lyrics | purchase

About Stained Glass Scars

I’ve always been fascinated by Rebecca’s impulse to literally embody art as well as create it. I thought her tattoos would make a relevant cover, because I saw some obvious parallels between tattooing and the whole songwriting and recording process.

You take some dominant themes in your life, symbolize and sanctify them to a degree by converting them into art, endure some short-term pain to make a long-term statement, then take a little time out to heal.

And you’re never quite the same again.

 

About the Songs

I’ve personally always enjoyed it when a songwriter lowers his or her instrument, leans confidentially into the microphone, and lays bare for all the world how a particular piece of music came into being. I can’t presume to speak for anybody else, but in my own case this inevitably reeks of Monday morning quarterbacking of the worst kind. Because for me, the whole process of songwriting amounts to striking a match in a dark cave, and stumbling and groping your way towards the surface, with many a conveniently forgotten blind ally taken and discarded along the way. In hindsight it might all make rational sense, but actually doing it is a matter of pure gut instinct. I didn’t “set out” to write any of this stuff, it just kind of suggested itself as I went along. So it goes …

Also, for some reason lately I always seem to be writing in the first person. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m the narrator. The narrator might be someone I wouldn’t ever want to be. But there’ll always be something there I can relate to. I don’t strive to be factually truthful, but I absolutely strive to be emotionally truthful; you can always count on that.

We decided to leave the lyric sheet out of the CD package this time. Sometimes it’s fun to guess at the words you can’t really make out. The words are here on the site if you want them; I hope you won’t be too disappointed when you find out what I’ll really saying.