People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.
There's just enough drinking and cheating songs around without me adding to them. Unless you've got something better than "Misery and Gin" by Merle Haggard, you're beating a dead horse.
Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together.
There's a bunch of songs that I call B-sides on the record that you could argue could maybe have some potential commercial success with another artist, but for me, they just felt really whack.
On the long dusty ribbon of the long city street,
The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet,
With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea
And-the great movement changes-the pageant passes me.
We've always been trying to climb this ladder that leans so hard on our own idea of what our big songs are. We realized recently that we're not a band with big songs.
Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives, When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives, Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain, But never will be sung to us again, Is they remembrance. Now the hour of rest Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.
I remember how beautiful it was to fall asleep on your couch and cry in front of you for the first time.
You were the best platform from which to jump beyond myself.
What was wrong with me?
I don't think you ever write a song with any intention except the song's about such and such per say ... we've never written a song and thought 'oh it'd be great if in this part this happened in the audience'.