Barley Scotch In His Own Words...
The whole thing started when I was sitting on an airplane from somewhere to somewhere else (we fly around a LOT.) I was just finishing up a Mark Thomas book and I happened to have the interesting fortune of sitting beside a nice 60+ year old businessman-looking fellow who turned out to be an American arms dealer. We got to talking about guns and stuff and he whooped out his catalog. Somewhere around page 20-something I got to the M-16 Anti-Personnel Mine, nicknamed the Bouncing Betty. Hell, there was a studio picture of it backed by crushed velvet! It turns out there are thousands of these little honeys just waiting for the right man to come along scattered all around the nastier parts of the world. So I asked the fellow . . . was there a decent chance that if I had gotten off my motorcycle when I was riding through Bosnia and ignored the “Beware of Land Mines” signs everywhere and walked out into the field, and one of these Bettys bounced up and “rendered me nonviable” (the catalog’s words), it might have said “Made in Springfield, Missouri” on the bottom of it? He took the catalog back and quit talking to me and I ran into the airplane toilet and wrote the words to the song Bouncing Betty Boogie on a handful of toilet roll.
And that’s how all the words to all of the songs came – personal experiences and talking to people during the 2007 world tour. When you travel every single day for months on end, you meet yourself some real characters.
The music was inspired a lot by all the bands we played with at festivals and who supported us on our own gigs. Every one of them had drums and electric guitars, and we got to thinking that it would be a hell of a lot of fun to crank up a Les Paul and pound some drums on about half of the songs - we’ve always been a rock band, just using acoustic instruments. Why not get REALLY loud this time? We’re really excited about the record and we think we stayed true to our roots while also moving ahead and growing musically - that's what every band says about their new record, right? |
