I’ve written a lot of songs that involve a character crossing an endless stretch of frozen land, because I feel a lot of my life has been about perseverance and trying to outlast unbearable situations without going insane- or at least without going insane in a way that is irreversible.
So this song is about a soldier/spice salesman, who uses the warmth of spices to help him and others survive (emotionally & spiritually), a hard, barren, and relentless lifestyle.
Download MP3: Cinnamon House
What can I say? By the time I wrote this song I was basically a red giant, flaming out from having taken such a martial approach to life for so long. I would burn cayenne pepper as an incense, even though it made me cough like a crazy person, hoping it could revive my passion for life and will to live.
Download MP3: 10,000 Men
I just found this song the other day. I don’t really remember writing it, and I’m not sure I ever sung it. Like so many of the songs I wrote in the past, it now seems shockingly crude to me, although ten years ago, I would have felt differently. Words that seemed wholesome and commonplace when I was married to Hugh Heffner, now stand out like gigantic monsters when I’m married to Ned Flanders.
Still, I like it, and don’t think it’s really crude, as long as you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness. I don’t think words themselves really can be crude. To me, words are hollow containers, packed with meaning by the speaker and also the listener.
In the south, people always pack their cruelest messages inside the sweetest words, share affection through teasing, and give praise in a way that sounds like an insult (this allows the praise to be accepted without the receiver feeling like a narcissist.) Therefore, it is hard for me to judge a word by it’s surface meaning.
That is why I feel disturbed by some of the hate speech controversies that have been sweeping the nation recently (Donald Sterling, Don Jones, Robert Copeland, Maurice Price etc.) I feel it would be a horrible mistake to set a precedent of punishing people for their words. If we really want to make the world a safer place, we have to look beneath the surface of things and resist knee-jerk reactions to predictable provocations.
But it would never do us any good to suppress people’s words.
For example, if someone makes racist comments because they are a racist, at least their words are letting us know where they stand so we can react accordingly. If a man makes sexist comments, that could be a useful clue that you don’t want to marry him. Unfortunately, the most dangerous predators probably don’t go around saying dumb things. But when someone does reveal their hand, we can be grateful for the info.
Other times, offensive words may be a cry for help. They may express an immature person’s need for love and attention, or a desire to feel powerful. They may be the ramblings of a mind that has come unhinged and is spouting notions it heard in the past. They may be the bilous expressions of a pain and agony that has become unbearable. In these cases, I feel we can forgive people for their clumsy attempts to get their needs met, and respond to the underlying message, just as we would with a child who is misbehaving to win affection.
One way or another, words are messengers, and as the saying goes, you never kill the messenger!
Download MP3: Something bout Words
This is a morality song about the Vanderlus, an ordinary confederate couple with the classic southern problems of over-exuberance, intolerance of boredom, and a proclivity for jumping back and forth between the fire and the frying pan.
Download MP3: The Vanderlus
A song about the Mexican Fire Bird… a gigantic orange bird who helps people escape constrained, repressive circumstances (including prison). The Mexican Fire Bird frequently guides people out west to where the grid of the earth is wide and spacious and they can once again take deep breaths of exhilaration and adventure.
The Mexican Fire Bird has many friends, but also enemies, including one black bird so large he is the size of four cars (and bigger when his wings are spread.) He snatches musicians with his beak and carries them way up high, so high that everyone can see them, a shining star at last, until he drops them onto a large pile of rocks by a creek somewhere in Henderson County, Tennessee. After that, I don’t know what happens… probably he eats their remains.
Some people say this black bird makes his nest on top of the large bat building in downtown Nashville. But at any rate, he is a sworn enemy to the Mexican Fire Bird. Because the Mexican Fire Bird teaches people to seek the fire within, and the Nashville Blackbird can only prey on those looking to find fire in other peoples’ eyes.
Download MP3: On a Mexican Trail
For some reason, I love confederate soldiers and they pop up frequently into my imagination.* Obviously, the south was in the wrong, but still I tend to think that the soldiers did not fight alone, but had fairies fighting with them side by side. Why would fairies fight for the Confederate army? I don’t know. My best guess is that they wanted the south to remain agricultural and undeveloped, so that they would have a place to live and their societies and cultures would not be destroyed. But in the end, they were. It is strange how even in the most black and white circumstances, there will always be more to the picture than we can see.
* I don’t like slavery.
Download MP3: Massanuttin
When I was living in Gomorrah (Beverly Hills), a friend and I went out to for a drink. She was an unnaturally wise friend, and as we were walking to the bar she kept instructing me “Just say no. Whatever the question is, the answer is no.” Next thing I remember, I was drunk and hungry and a nice man was inviting us to his house for some homemade pasta with a little side of cocaine. But thanks to my friend’s brainwashing, “no” was the first word that came out of my mouth. I had always been more of a “yes” person and it was a magical moment for me to view life from the other side of the coin.
I think we are all either “yes” people or “no” people, having one of these words set in our minds as a default when we are too tired, stressed, or drunk to think. But in the war between yeses and nos, I now try to plant myself firmly on the side of the nos, because really there are only a few things in life you need to say yes to, but a never-ending stream of things you need to reject. Or as my husband tells me every morning “Broad and spacious is the path leading to destruction.”
Download MP3: Longest Day on Earth
I always felt fascinated by the Ohio River because it separates Kentucky, where I grew up, from Indiana, the Emerald City-State, where everything is possible, where hopes and dreams come true by the minute. I love driving through Southern Indiana with its endless golden fields, gambling machines, and 64 oz polar pops. I love the flatness and lack of variety which make the land seem to stretch out forever, hypnotically, like a golden ocean. I love their cheeseburger hotdogs and American flag bandana-shorts, which encourage you to release the vain pretenses of the city and just be yourself, a human being, who loves tasty treats and the feeling of wind in your hair.
At other times, though, I hated Indiana and the Hoosiers who lived there. Sometimes it seemed like Kentucky was the promised land, a buttery gold corn fritter, while Indiana was a slimy side of spinach, basking in Kentucky’s sunlight and giving nothing in return but ghosts, which crossed the Ohio at night in hordes, seeking a better life in Kentucky.
Download MP3: Pink Star of the Beautiful Ohio
This song was inspired by the fairies of fire, and the book “Enchantment of the Faerie Realm” by Ted Andrews, a book I wish I still owned. Although many of my beliefs (like the belief that wearing designer clothes will make you rich) have changed over the years, my faith in fairies has never wavered. What else could explain the growth of plants and those tiny smiley faces you see in the sunbeams?
Download MP3: Burn Baby
