1. Phone Bills

In the time that we had known one another, you’d written the equivalent of about an album’s worth of material about us. Roughly half the songs were about us getting together, falling in love…the other half were about us breaking up. Even the breakup songs were sweet. Through all of it, I only ever wrote you one song. It was about leaving. Specifically, it was about why I left. The only phone I mentioned in that song was the one I never used to say goodbye. I wrote you a letter instead. In hindsight, that wasn’t the best way to say call it off. 

You were the only person who ever would have moved somewhere for me. You were the only person who would have changed everything. Every time that I moved anywhere, or changed everything, I thought about that. Believe me, I did. It was years too late, but I figured I owed you this song. 

We spoke on and off for years. We don’t speak much anymore. When everything happened with the guy with the ring you were the first person I thought of. Driving up the coast I remembered that at one time, somebody had really loved me. In that moment, I regretted everything. 

I just wanted you to know.

Phone Bills lyrics

I was young and I was dumb
what can I tell you
I thought I was getting started
I never did get started
somehow I'm still waiting
and you were changing too
we collided in the night somehow

all those miles apart you showed me things about the brick built buildings
and the cobble stone roads
in every song you wrote
when we were young and we were in love
when we were young and we were in love

I don't remember leaving
I don't remember anything like I remember you that day you took me to the cemetery
where they buried the man you'd called your dad
I remember regretting all my best laid plans
they'd all been laid to waste

all those miles apart you showed me things about the brick built buildings
and the cobble stone roads
in every song you wrote
when we were young and we were in love
when we were young and we were in love

you were waiting 
you were ready
I wasn't waiting, I wasn't ready
and the ink on your letters still ain't fading
and for the thousands of dollars in phone bills
I still don't know if you understand me
I still don't understand those phone bills
god damn those phone bill

all those miles apart showed me things about the brick built buildings
and the cobble stone roads
and every song you wrote
when we were young and we were in love
when we were young and we were in love
we were young
we were in love

3. The Satellites + I

After years of things not working out, I resigned myself to solitude. Self inflicted solitary confinement, if you will, as often as I could get at it. I got myself a single bedroom apartment in basically the ghetto and was committed to living alone for at least awhile. It wasn’t that I didn’t leave the house, I just didn’t really leave the house all that much.

When I wasn’t on the road or working the equivalent of two full time jobs, I really settled in to this new way of living. I took up painting. I’d read a book a day. I’d try to finish (or at least start) some kind of song idea. I didn’t own a television. I rarely had money because any time I did, I spent it all on studio time. My life turned in two extremes…I was either always around/in front of people, or completely alone. Each world began to resent the other. I started to feel like I was watching my life through a window.

I don’t know when this started exactly but I started having horrifying nightmares. I’d wake up sweating and unable to go back to sleep. Eventually I was afraid of falling asleep in fear of what might happen in these weird dreams of mine.

I remember looking out the window of my apartment in the ghetto and I couldn’t even see a star in the sky. What a sad existence, I thought. All my money goes to pay the rent on this place, whether I’m here or not…and there's not even a star in the sky to keep me company.

I think this is my favourite song from the new album. Maybe because it’s about how lonely I feel sometimes, and that somehow makes me feel less lonely. I sat down at the desk in my apartment and instantly this song was written. In maybe about five minutes, there it was. It’s always a nice feeling when the world just hands you one, kinda for free. I guess the price was just going through the days like that…all alone and cut off from the world. I guess you can’t really hear melodies sometimes when there’s so much clutter around.

Some of this song makes me think of a Billy Bragg line I really love: “I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them but they were only satellites, is it wrong to wish on space hardware, I wish, I wish, I wish you cared…”

The bridge is the sound of rooftops breaking apart and turning in to sky.

The Satellites + I lyrics:

Promise me you'll find me in the darkest night
When I haven't left the house for days

Rescue me 
Save me from this restless sleep
The nightmares and the fucked up dreams I can't escape
And if you really knew of twilight's impending doom
You'd be awake now too

Wake me up 
When they come to carry me
And I cannot relive this night again
Pull me in 
Wrap your arms around this end
Painted with the void
The black
The terror of taking it back
Every night
This time I will not put up a fight 
I'll just let it swallow me whole
There's nowhere to go
And if you're up tonight I'm waiting
I can't sleep to save my life

All the constellations faded
It's just me and the satellites
Me and the satellites

And if you really knew of twilight's impending doom
You'd be awake now too

So if you're up tonight I'm waiting
I can't sleep to save my life
All the constellations faded

It's just me and the satellites
Me and the satellites
Me and the satellites

6. Sure As Hell Ain't My Life

Do we all look at our lives at some point and say “There is no way this is my life”?

Maybe it’s more a feeling than about specifics. I’m certainly not a parent and I’m not married, but I’ve been in situations that caused me to look around and ask myself who I had become. It’s a feeling of being trapped. The feeling of looking at your significant other and realizing you don’t even know who they are. Maybe you never did. The feeling of showing up to work and having no clue how you ended up with this job you don’t even like.

It’s not to say you regret how things ended up or where you are. You just didn’t really plan any of this. How could you? How can any of us.

We bought and built this life and the thing I sometimes forget is that you can change pretty much most things at any given time. You’re not trapped in your job or your relationship. It’s up to you to make your life in to what you want it to be.

This is another song that came rather quickly. I wanted to speak to the people who felt trapped, as I sometimes do (as we all do) and know that they’re not alone. In fact, there are way more people who can relate than we could ever realize. Maybe you can relate right now.

Frank came up with the idea of it being a duet. Originally, I was singing all the parts. I’m so glad he suggested it cause I was certainly too chicken shit to ask him to sing on the record. I was secretly hoping it would happen though. Production-wise this is another favourite of mine because at times it reminds me of Ryan Adams albums I love. I am a massive big Ryan Adams fan.

This Sure As Hell Ain't My Life lyrics:

you cast a shadow like I had never seen
you were strangely aloof and kind of mean
and I've doubted everything
since you married me

a whole mess of trouble and only 17 
and let's be real for a minute
not exactly the prom queen
I don't know how to be happy
and I don't know how to leave

we bought this house and we had these kids
I don't know whose life this is
it sure as hell ain't mine

I look at you and I don't know who you are
where'd you get those clothes
where'd you lease that car
don't tell the neighbours you ain't got no savings jar
cause you'd never know it
just look at you now
waving those cards all over town
I don't want anything any more
I just want out

we bought this house and we had these kids
I don't know whose life this is
it sure as hell ain't mine
it sure as hell ain't my life
it sure as hell ain't mine
take it to the bridge*
we bought this house and we had these kids
and I don’t regret it

But I don't know whose life this is
it sure as hell ain't mine
it sure as hell ain't my life
it sure as hell ain't mine

8. Back To You

Written in Victoria.

The first time someone told me they wanted to be with me forever, I said yes. There was a ring involved. The second time there was a ring involved, I said no. It was the weirdest most awkward thing I think I’ve ever done or felt. “Where do we go from here?” I remember thinking.

Everybody has that one person your heart and your brain keep going back to. Hopefully it’s the person you end up with! When it’s not, it can take years to retrain your brain to start thinking properly again.

I remember the first time Frank played the bass part that departs a little bit from the guitar part. It happens in one of the verses and in the bridge. As he was trying to figure it out I was like “Yes!” and asked if he wanted to take a second to figure it out. I could see what he was trying to do and wanted to make sure it made it on to the record! I still love it just as much every single time I hear it.

I also really like the sneaky guitar part. This is another song/moment that reminds me of what was cool about working with another songwriter/guitar player…I was messing around trying to come up with a guitar part and he walked in that morning and that was the first thing he played.

Back To You lyrics:

asking for a wedding
now it feels like a funeral 
up in the rafters
what happens when the curtains call
I got a message in a bottle straight to my heart
you learn a lot about a man in the way he falls apart

ask about the ending like the plot line is up for grabs
I watched the dialogue fall apart right in your hands
I got a message in a bottle straight to my heart
you learn a lot about a girl when you go back to the start

follow your heart you said
you said
but it doesn't line up with what's in my head
and every time I ask it what I should do it only leads back to you

take in to account all the midnight surgeries
all the effort in the alleyways was all news to me
I got a message
I got a bottle
straight to my heart
you learn a lot about a girl in the way she falls apart

follow your heart you said
you said
but it doesn't line up with what's in my head
and every time I ask it what I should do it only leads back to you
it only leads back
it only leads back
only leads back it only leads back
it only leads back to you

9. Virginia

There’s supposedly a legend involving the city of Richmond, Virginia that states there’s only one way out of there unless you want to be destined to returned. It’s something to do with a Native Indian curse from what I recall. I could be remembering this incorrectly and/or it’s entirely possible my band mates the Southside Boys just told me this to mess with me but the story always stuck with me.

My love affair with this city is like 7 years in the making. I started visiting sporadically and a few years later made a record there, put a band together and then finally ended up staying. As I’m writing this I’m wearing a t-shirt from one of my favourite establishments in the world which is located in Richmond, 821 Café.

Here’s another example of Frank playing something that, for me, makes the song. As soon as he started playing the acoustic guitar part (that’s me on electric) I got really, really stoked. The studio for me is always a combination of being very quiet and thoughtful, analyzing and overthinking everything, and then going on autopilot and just making stuff up. Working with someone who could kind of pick up the slack for lack of a better term was so cool…it gave my brain a chance to rest and also allowed me to step outside that one part of my brain and start just listening. It was way easier for me to listen to the boys’ parts and feel happy or excited. I was never really listening to my own parts as my brain was kind of still attached to the act of making them up. I don’t know if that makes sense but it’s the only way I can think to describe it.

Virginia lyrics:

I know these streets like the palms of my hands
cracking when the weather changed the best laid plans
oh Virginia
the wind and the rain, the sleet and the snow
I’ve been ready a long time ago
oh Virginia, oh Virginia, Virginia, I gotta go
Virginia, I gotta go
did the blood on the tracks get in to the land 
can you ever leave ever wash your hands
oh Virginia
up and down the Chesapeake coast
trying to rememberer who you love the most
oh but it wasn't you was it

oh Virginia
meet at the bottom
I don't wanna go it alone
Oh Virginia
meet me in the middle 
I'm about halfway home
Oh Virginia it's the end of the road
Oh Virginia I gotta go

take me to the cemetery where you keep
the memories of the ones who leave
Oh Virginia
will they make a landmark of your heart
and how you really loved her but it fell apart
Oh Virginia where do I even start
Oh Virginia, it's getting dark
did the blood on the tracks get in to the plan 
can you ever leave ever wash your hands
Oh Virginia
And all around the Chesapeake bay
who do you think that you are anyway
oh but it wasn't you
was it

11. Thoroughfare

Written in Liverpool, all jet lagged and unable to sleep, trying to play and write as quiet as I could in my hotel the night before my first ever show in England. I played it for the first time the following night in London. It’s the beginning/first of knowing I couldn’t stay in L.A. and feeling different, cut off, and yet ready to move on.

There’s been this prevalent feeling in my life that maybe music wasn’t something I was supposed to try and do for my “job”. It was too important to me. It made me too happy. Every time I tried to make it in to more than something I just liked doing, I always ended up not liking it as much.

Being in L.A. and around all that L.A. kind of stuff certainly didn’t help. Truth be told, I had ended up living there the first time because I fell in love. This time it was a job opportunity that seemed to be falling apart. Why was I even there? I didn’t need to be there, not to make my little songs in my room and maybe play every once in awhile where people would let me. It was time to go…maybe I would just stay in London…

I remember thinking of my dreams like sand. It had seemed as if they’d slipped through my hands yet again, but as life is sometimes cyclical, perhaps they were being pushed back in my direction, a little more with each wave of from each new day.

2. Riverbank

Somewhere in Northern Portugal, I don’t remember the name of the city. A small coastal town with cobblestone roads and hand made walking bridge. I remember I’d already moved on and we weren’t speaking much. I was already speaking with someone else. I was pretty sure you could tell.

I worked out the words on the backs of some receipts, a notepad supplied by the hotel and finally, on a piece of paper that I carried across that walking bridge, over a river beside the ancient hotel I would sleep at that night. I don’t think anyone got the song that night. I think I was still working it out. It might have been the fact that the song was in English.

Sometimes you meet people on the road or people who also do this road thing and inevitably, you get talking about road stuff. One of the road things you sometimes talk about is the feeling of being strangely at home when you’re not, and somehow, not at all at home when you are.

It brings me great comfort to know I am not the only person who feels like this. In those moments when it’s happening, you really feel like you are the only person who feels like this.
 

Riverbank lyrics

woke up in a city by a river alone
with a broken key card and rotary phone
can you hear the church bells in the market place
they're counting down the days until they see your face
and they want to know if you'll be home tonight
it's okay
don't answer
it's alright

if I see another hotel room I'm gonna implode
can never wait to get home when I'm out on the road
then I'm staring at the walls until I go out again
maybe I could be happy
you could tell me when
somebody wants to know
if you wish I were there
it's okay

don't answer
I don't care
somebody wants to know if you'll be home tonight
it's okay
don't answer
it's alright

meet me at the riverbank and tell me I'm yours
you know what they say when it rains here it pours
like a little black cloud showing up at your door
I don't want to rain on this town no more
somebody wants to know if you wish I were there
it's okay don't answer
I don't care

4. Science

This one was written in Los Angeles while we were recording “Stars, Exploding”. I never really know where I’m going to end up or what exactly is going on. We always think we have an idea of what would be best or the way things are supposed to be. We are not always right.

Sometimes Jamie Candiloro (who mixed the new album and produced the last one) would text me on his way over to pick me up and let me know he was running late. “Now is my chance,” I would think. I tried to quickly write something every chance I got. I still try to be that way as often as I can.

I didn’t really think this one was going to be much of a song because the chords and the arrangements were pretty straight forward and simple, but Frank liked it right away. I made up the lyrics for the bridge on the spot while I was recording the demo. I didn’t know what I was going to say but I pressed record and those are just the words that came out. I think I even used the first take. There’s something to those first takes, before your brain starts thinking and ruins what your initial instincts brought to the table.

I’m really glad we were able to use all the original electric guitar parts for every song on the album, when all three of us (Frank, Nigel from his band the Sleeping Souls and I) were standing in the room together. I think that if I tried to replay that guitar part after the fact my brain would have got in the way and tried to wreck it. I think that’s what I like about this one…it’s not overthought.

My dad just sent me a message saying he’s listened to this song six times in a row today. I’m glad it ended up making the cut.

Thanks Frank.

Science lyrics:

I've been thinking about Nashville 
and the way you like the rain
I know these lines all blur together like I'm just dropping names
but a city starts to mean something else when you're never going back again
you can write it all down but it don't add up 
you could let her go but it's asking too much
I don't know who or where anymore

I've had enough
maybe one day when you are older
you'll find out what you missed
for the love of god 
I'm a scientist

I was halfway to Atlanta just waiting on them trains
there's a real good chance you don't know my real name
well I don't really hurt or care anymore

I just change
I'll change direction
I'll change my ways 
I'll change tunes
change gears
change interstates
now's your chance if you got something to say 
cause you ain't never gonna see me again

maybe one day when you are older
you'll find out what you missed
for the love of god I'm a scientist
maybe one day when you are older
you'll find out what you missed
for the love of god I'm a scientist

meet me halfway I don't know where we are going
meet me in Memphis where it's not snowing
I don't know we are going
maybe down south where it ain't snowing
maybe one day when you are older
you'll find out what you missed
for the love of god 
I'm a scientist

5. The Quarry

The Quarry came to me in a vision. Seriously.

I sat down at my old collapsible typewriter desk, looked out the window of my apartment in Surrey, and there it was…the whole movie. It wasn’t really a full movie but it was a series of shots I knew I had to try and put in to a song.

In the first act, all I saw was a gun, and a hand hiding it. Some kind of a farm, the wind blowing in the wheat, there’s a mine nearby…I could feel it. Everything was slow motion, I couldn’t quite tell what was going on until I got to the next scene. 

He shows up at her work place. He’s frantic. Anxious. Something is really wrong. “We gotta get out of here.” I can see his mouth make the words but I can’t hear them. She’s confused. "What’s going on? I can’t leave work..." He’s adamant and grabs her hand. They run right to the train station.

Waiting for the train, she’s trying to ask him questions. He can barely reply, his eyes fixed down the track. Where is it? It should be here by now. He keeps looking at his watch and looking around. "What is he looking for?"

I’m not sure if they ever make the train, but I do know the cops eventually snag them. He’s in the hot seat, furiously proclaiming his innocence. Then they’re questioning her. She is mostly confused. “What gun? No I don’t know where any gun is…”

Finally, the answers come. You see the whole movie, the gun being hidden, the work place, the train station, the cop shop…every scene is replayed, but our two main characters are in opposite roles. The tables have been turned. We learn that it’s the girl who has committed this crime, and in efforts to save herself, has framed this innocent man. The last scene shows us the man being taken away by the cops, hands behind him in hand cuffs, as she just stands there. Everything is in slow motion. He’s screaming something. She just stands there. As they take him away, she turns around and walks away. 

I really hope I can make a music video for this song one day.

The Quarry lyrics:

Down at the quarry
I ain't been since we were young
right by the landslide
where you hid the gun
before we skipped town
you said "we gotta go now"
I didn't know what you was talking about
but I followed you
and you got out

hanging on the corner
begging for a dime
you said "we got a train to catch
we don't have much time"
and I knew you was bad news
when they starting asking you
what did you do
oh what did you do
and I always knew
but I followed you

I don't wanna know how you did it
but I gotta know why
and if the good Lord
has forgiven it
he is merciful
and so am I
he has forgiven you 
after all this time
he has forgiven you after all this time

down at the quarry
when we were young
right by the landslide
is where I hid the gun
before we skipped town
I said "we gotta go now"
you didn't know what I was talking about
you followed me and I sold you out
yeah you followed me and I got out
you followed me and I got out

7. Chelsea Rose

Not long ago one of my earliest childhood friends was murdered at the Cobalt Motor Inn on Main Street in Vancouver, BC. The Cobalt is a pretty shady hotel upstairs with a pretty cool punk rock bar downstairs. It’s right down the street from the notorious Hastings and Main (another place I have a song about). I’ve been playing at the Cobalt since I was a kid. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had my 19th birthday party there (the legal drinking age in BC). I remember the staff being genuinely shocked. We had already been playing there for months.

I don’t know all the details of what went down but I was really shocked and sad when my Mom told me Chelsea was gone. I was on the road when I found out but the song didn’t happen until I was staying with my folks months later. In the span of a day wrote like three songs while laying on the futon mattress in my old room.

I wanted to write something for Chelsea’s mom (my godmother), that shared some of the happy memories I had of us as kids. I could imagine her just being weighed down with the loss of her only daughter and the tragedy in the details of how it happened and why she was gone. The song probably turned out a little sadder than I intended (I think my own grieving got in the way a bit) but I wanted her to know she wasn’t alone and that Chelsea was a really special girl who I always adored.

The first verse is about the two of us terrorizing her grandmother’s apartment complex, running through the many building playing tag and hide and go seek while her parents were trying to visit. The last verse is about a trip to the fair and how we both loved to go on the same rides over and over again. In the bridge I wanted to let her Mom know that (although it would be of no consolation) I really did pick up the phone and call some old friends for the first time in awhile. Sometimes a death or a tragedy makes you realize how lucky you are and reminds you not to take people for granted. I knew it wouldn’t make her feel any better but it’s the only bright side I could find in losing Chelsea.

Chelsea Rose lyrics:

in the hallways of subsidized housing
no one frequents these halls
we'd be running from building to building
wondering who'd live there at all
and it's funny the remember
dance routines no one would see
I don't dance anymore, Chelsea

your parents got you that jacket that day we crossed the line
we were coming back over the border
thinking we'd make it home fine
but right then I started to lose it
I wanted to be just like you
I never could wear mine like you do

they say you died in the hallway of that motor inn where I used to play
how did they tell you mamma
and where were your babies that day
it had been a minute
and it's shame now isn't it
that's how it goes 
Chelsea Rose

I remember the sunset on the demolition show
and running fourteen times to the same old ride
how we did it, well I still don't know
years later you went off to rehab working on recovery
at least that's what they said, Chelsea

they say you died in the hallway of that motor inn where I used to play
what did they tell you mamma and where were your babies that day
it had been a minute
and it's shame now isn't it
that's how it goes
Chelsea Rose

I made a list of the people I missed and I called them all one at a time
I told em how much their memory meant and I told them to call me sometime
I guess I got you to thank cause I don't always act like I know
how short a life can be, Chelsea Rose

they say you died in the hallway...

10. Lord Let Me

Sometimes people ask me about my writing process and I always feel weird when I’m answering them. It’s always different. I’m not trying to sound like some crazy person but it really is. I also know that I’m not re-inventing the wheel when I say things like “sometimes you sit down and in five minutes a song is done or “sometimes it takes months to finish a song”. Even though “Horseshoes & Hand Grenades” started with 36 demos (which were narrowed down to the final 13 tracks that we recorded), there is really no clear answer to how any of the songs were written. Lord Let Me, for example, took me years to write.

It started while on a soul-searching adventure all over Europe with a couple pals. I always paid attention to public affairs and remembered hearing about “The Troubles” in Ireland and Belfast from Canada, but there’s no way you can really understand it until you go there. Easy to say, I know, but that is just the sense I got, instantly.

I arrived in Dublin and rented a car. The plan was to see two Ryan Adams shows in two days (surprise, surprise) then drive around the country, stopping in at County Sligo and Galway, where my Grandmother was born and then resided.

I’m big in to museums, art galleries…you name it. By the time we got to Belfast, it was becoming clearer to me what it might have meant when my English, Protestant Grandfather and Irish, Roman Catholic Grandmother first got together. Maybe that is why they ended up moving to Canada?? 

This song is a whole bunch of speculation and maybe even a bit of made up stuff, but it’s essentially the imaginary love story of them falling in love and having to skip town. I bet their families were furious. Imagine what that would have meant back then!

I realize I don’t really know anything about how trying it must have been to be around for all that stuff but from afar this was my attempt to write a love song that had been affected by politics. I am sure it’s not the first time that has happened to two people.

I’m glad they figured it out and didn’t let where they came from get in the way.

Lord Let Me lyrics:

John, he was a member of the UDA
Mamma was a Catholic
I don't mean halfway
when he got the news he didn't know what to say
what to say
he made a bit of money, it went away 
you know, it never really lasts that long these days
doctor says people shouldn't live that way
come on Lord come on and take me away

take me to the fields where the rivers flow
take me to the people that I used to know
it doesn't matter where Lord just let me go
just let me go, just let me go

Mamma was a member of the IRA
John, he grew up on the Shankill road
when he got the news he didn't know what to say
what to say
he got enlisted and it took him away
you know, he never was around much anyway
preacher said people shouldn't live that way
come on Lord come on and take me away

Take me to the fields where the rivers flow
Take me to the people I used to know
It doesn't matter where Lord just let me go
just let me go
take me to the calm, take me to the peace
take me to the gates where I shall be released
It doesn't matter where Lord just set me free
just set me free, just set me free

John he was a member of the UDA
Mamma was a Catholic 
I don't mean halfway
When she got the news she didn't know what to say 
what to say 
what to say
Take me to the fields where the rivers flow
Take me to the people I used to know
It doesn't matter where Lord just let me go
just let me go
take me to the calm, take me to the peace
take me to the gates where I shall be released
It doesn't matter where Lord just set me free
just set me free, just set me free

Thoroughfare lyrics:

in London there's a place where I've been waiting around for days
in a most peculiar way
by the thoroughfare
and I think about you face
and how we went about that day
without very much to say
to the ocean air

and I don't think that I'll be going back there
if you need me I'm by the thoroughfare

if all the hopes and dreams I had are still there in the sand
well they slipped right through my hands and were washed ashore
but now the tide is coming in
and they'll be back some day
will I see you there my friend
near the palisades

and I don't think that I'll be going back there
if you need me I'm by the thoroughfare

and I don't think that I'll be going back there
if you need me I'm by the thoroughfare
if you need me I'm by the thoroughfare
if you need me I'm by the thoroughfare