-
HOA Man 3:370:00/3:37
-
Rosabelle Believe 3:020:00/3:02
-
0:00/3:31
-
0:00/3:28
-
Hurting Me 4:380:00/4:38
Rosabelle Believe
"Rosabelle Believe" details Erich Weiss' (aka Harry Houdini) life and his fascination with the after-life. Dismayed by mediums and psychics and their fraudulent attempts to contact his deceased mother, Erich vowed to his wife Bess that if he were to die before her, he would attempt to make contact with her from the spirit world. The original “Rosabelle Believe” was a civil war-era song that Bess whistled while setting up for their magic shows, and became the secret code words that he would use for Bess to truly know that it was him contacting her from beyond the grave.
Erich died on Halloween 1926. Every October 31st following his death, Bess lit candles for her deceased husband hoping for his return and the chance to hear the words, 'Rosabelle Believe.' Bess herself died on February 11, 1943, legend has it, without having heard those words again.
The song was inspired by a biography of Harry Houdini that Kyle read with his son.
Walk in Time
Kyle wrote this song in the Usual Suspects days, and it was a staple of that groups live performances although it was never recorded by the band.
"Walk in Time" is a song about the growth of a child and his evolving relationship with his parents. In the first verse, his identity is secured at an early age as he shows no interest in his father’s sport of hunting. In the second verse he is further distanced from his parents as a teenager and walls are built “too high to be climbed” and he is forced to live by “rules that are never truly defined”. In the third verse the character has grown and now as a parent he understands the “depth of love” a parent has for their child.
The line “Shadow, I am Black” comes from the Langston Hughes poem, "As I Grew Older" although in the poem, the shadow has a more sinister meaning.
Special
"Special" began as any of our songs do, but soon turned into an effort from the entire band. Instead of the nearly finished songs Kyle usually brings to rehearsal, this time he brought a title, two verses, and a chorus. He thought the song would be too short, even with the third verse that Brian was writing. So we added the bridge section. Then we added an instrumental section that Mark helped Kyle with. Then, we added another verse. So we had the parts, but we didn’t know how to make it all fit. Jason took a big piece of poster board that happened to be lying around and wrote out a sequence that he followed when we played the song. Now it’s very seamless sounding, but at first we didn’t know what we were doing with the different parts and choruses that aren’t always the same length.
So, what is it all about? It’s your basic love song, beginning with the ‘surfer dude’ narration of the first verse all the way to the mature adults looking back fondly to their own youth at the end. Maybe it’s about the timelessness of a great love or something like that.
Yeah, that’s what we’ll go with…
Young Again
Another parent-child relationship song. This one illustrates how parents recapture their youth through the eyes of their children. From the excitement of walking on your father’s feet to sharing your favorite music through song… our children make us feel young again.
Uphill Both Ways
This is the first song that Kyle & Brian wrote together for Wookie Garcia. Brian thought he was done with the lyrics after the third verse, but when the band started playing the tune we kept playing one more time through. So Brian resorted to just repeating the first verse again, something that we hardly ever do, because it seems wasteful, or lazy, or something.
The song is about a child’s growing up from the parent’s point of view, but it didn’t really have an ending until Brian’s son’s school graduation. Inspired by a few short words right after the ceremony, Brian wrote the last verse the next day. Brian admits to telling his own kids about how rough he had it growing up, but there is no evidence that he actually walked uphill both to and from school.
Fortune Cookie
This is a song that dates back to the Usual Suspects days. What you hear on the CD actually began as a Hatfield Rain recording. When we started tracking for the Wookie Garcia album, Patrick played this for us and we decided that there would be no reason to re-record the song when we had these tracks available to start with.
As far as the song goes, "Fortune Cookie" tells the story of a poor soul who’s given up believing he can ever control his own destiny, and that he’d be better off positioning himself to be lucky instead. Brian credits reading “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence early in life as molding how he looks at the concept of relying on chance versus skill and effort.
Brand New Life
At the end of the first year of Usual Suspects, the band recorded a cassette entitled Pictures Never Lie. Starting off the next year Kyle & Brian resumed writing for the band, and "Brand New Life" was the first song they completed. A straightforward story of a man released from prison anxious to pick up where he left off with his life, all set to a Bo Diddley-like beat and spaghetti western guitar.
What Gives?
Wookie Garcia played this song for years without discussing what is what actually about. Kyle says this is a song inspired by California’s Proposition 8 back in 2008 which has (temporarily) put on hold the equal application of the law to all citizens. Brian and Mark reminded Kyle that the song pre-dates that election by a couple of years. They both thought the song was about the US-Iraq war begun a few years earlier. The genius of this simple but effective song is that it can really be about either of those things. Or something else entirely.
Goodnight Montana
A song written for Dan McLain (aka Country Dick Montana), legendary drummer and front man for San Diego's own Beat Farmers, one of our greatest inspirations.
Kyle says that this song, "was initially inspired by an article I had read that coined Country Dick as the 'last of the grown men.' Years later, at the funeral for my friend and former Beat Farmer, Buddy Blue, I struck up a conversation with the man standing next to me who turned out to be the author of this article. Coincidence? I think not. At least he didn’t whisper, 'Rosabelle Believe' in my ear."
Harry Truman
Written by Stan Ridgway and Bill Noland, this is the first cover song that we have recorded. Musically and thematically, this does seem to fit with the rest of the songs on the CD. What is bulletproof on the outside only conceals what is human inside. We should always look beneath the image to see what is really there underneath. We haven’t discussed this with Stan, but that’s what we get out of the story. He did tell us that this was an, “obscure one” when we told him that we had recorded it.
A Walk through the Desert
Kyle shared the music to this song with Brian, playing the chords over and over on guitar and humming the melody. Brian had a title in his head, but little else. He was pretty sure he wanted to craft a lyric juxtaposing a philosophical 'walk through the desert' to any tourist’s visit to Sin City, but he wasn't really sure where he was going with it. The larger idea of ‘salvation’ didn’t really appear until midway through the song. As Kyle worked out the order of the parts, Brian referenced a street map of Las Vegas, as well as some tidbits on various resorts, a little mythology & goodness knows what other things that ultimately got left out of the song. What was left is a song that can be taken just about anyway you want.
The song includes two references to quotes made famous by others: Sam Kinison, who said (not speaking of the Nevada desert), "that sand would still be sand in a hundred years," and Gertrude Stein, who said (not of Las Vegas), “there is no there there.”