Some nights I sit down to write and there's nothing there. I check the top of my head, find it empty, and conclude I've run dry. Forty-seven years of material and the drawer's bare. Nothing worth anybody's time. This has been happening my whole life. What's different now is that I've stopped believing it. Here's … Continue reading Out Of Stuff To Say
I've been interviewing myself. It's a memoir exercise — a long set of structured questions about my own life, answered out loud while I walk, cleaned up afterward. I talk into my phone in a neighborhood in Oklahoma City like a man having an argument with nobody. What I expected was to remember things. What's … Continue reading Ahead of the Room
Christmas of 1997 I asked my parents for a guitar, and they got me one. I was halfway through my sophomore year, home for the break. I opened the box and I was genuinely thrilled — right up until I got my hands on the neck. It was a beginner's three-quarter model, and my hands … Continue reading The Wall
I set out to write an angry song. The idea was a defiance anthem. When hard weather comes for you, you've got two options — you can be a candle the wind puts out, or you can be the thing the wind feeds until it's a firestorm nobody can stop. That was the whole concept, … Continue reading The Song Came Out Wrong
Several years back, I had a tape recorder in the passenger seat. Not for anything important. Song ideas, mostly — I'd get a melody or a line while driving and reach over and hit record and sing it at the windshield. Later there was a little handheld one, and after that an MP3 recorder. Same habit, … Continue reading Out of Tune
