I play guitar, write a few songs, work on other people's records from time to time (playing and/or production), do other peripheral, vaguely music related stuff (consulting-sounds strange I know but, it's true) and I live in a Winnebago currently parked at a super, secret location somewhere in the Missouri Ozarks.

Trouble Ain’t Over-Track by Track

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time and, for whatever reason, haven’t got around to it until now.

Recently, I have had a bunch of different people, that have the CD, approach me when I’m out playing a gig, that have questions about certain songs, wonder if there is a story behind the lyric or general insight. Some are guitar players that want to know specific things like, what amp, what delay setting, technical things. Others are listeners who sometimes have interpreted something.

I have also been getting some other response from listeners who have purchased the album or tracks on-line that are seeking similar information. All of this makes me feel good, like I’m on the right track. A lot of these folks have had the CD for a few months so, it kind of indicates that they are hearing different things after they have listened over time, which is a very nice thing for a songwriter and musician.

So, track by track, here are my thoughts on “Trouble Ain’t Over”

I Let The Whisky Kiss Me (Goodnight):

I have never had a great deal of success in working with co-writers. I’m not sure why that is. The times that I have had good luck with co-writing, Bill Dees has been involved. That may be because Bill is an old school Nashville co-writer and he is comfortable with the give and take required. By the way, Bill is best known for his work with his former writing partner Roy Orbison (“Oh, Pretty Woman”, “It’s Over”, “Ride Away”, “Windsurfer”) and it’s an honor to work with a man who has made that kind of contribution.

With “Whisky”, Bill and I had set up an appointment to write (just like Nashville) and invited Dave Abner to the party as well. I got to Bill’s studio a little early that evening and Bill was raring to go. He had the opening line already and he sang it to me with a kind of slow country, kind of cry in your beer vibe. I guess I had drank some good coffee on the way to the session ‘cause I wasn’t in that kind of mood. I liked the idea but, I wanted to do something up-tempo. I also thought that the line was so good that I wanted to do something to frame it, make it hard to ignore. So, I was getting my guitar sound and I said to Bill; “We ought to start this thing out with some stops, something like dah, dah, daht”- and Bill launched into the lyric. It fit together and it was different. About that time, Davey showed up and right away he sang, “I didn’t care that you weren’t there, when I turned out the light”. After that, it all just kind of came together at a furious pace. We finished writing it that night.

Lyrically, we had this idea where the woman left this guy that’s singing but, we didn’t want to make that obvious and say; “She left me”. The reason is, when you meet a guy like this, in some bar, he doesn’t come at you that way. He’s putting a spin on it like: “I finally got rid of her, let the party begin”, which, is almost never the reality. So, this guy is one of those sort of likeable, hard working, overly boisterous, screw-ups that we all know.

I knew that the Skeletons would knock this one out. It was the first song we recorded and I believe it was a first take. Joe Terry plays like the mad professor of the honky-tonk piano especially after the guitar solo.


Salvation:

My buddy Rollo and I have been through a lot of stuff together. We were in several different traveling bands. This was at a time when we were both drinking a lot and consuming various drugs. Our friendship survived all of that and all of the other traumas that life brings.

As we were coincidentally both getting sober for the first time in our adult lives we agreed to go on another road trip to the east coast. I think that both of us were a little nervous about it because we feared that it might be a “returning to scene of the crime” scenario. The trip turned out to be a disaster in most every way possible except; we both stayed sober-at least we had that. On the long drive back to the Ozarks, we stopped for gas and food in West Memphis; not far from where Rollo is from.

We were tired, too tired. We had that feeling we used to call, “the road burn”. On top of that, this truck stop/Waffle House was noisy, hot, and humid; there were pimps, prostitutes, junkies and drug dealer types all around us. It was like a Twilight Zone experience, as if some powerful force had lifted us out of our manageable existence and placed us down again smack dab in the middle of our old, scary lives.

When I got home, I put down a demo of the chord changes and I wrote lyrics that conveyed the way I used to feel back in the scary days of constant transit, constant burn, and intermittent violence.

Lloyd Hicks drum groove on this is exactly what I had hoped for, Bonham heavy and sweaty. The rhythm guitar part that Donnie Thompson plays is deceptively simple. It involves an F barre chord sliding in to a G. It’s really tough to do it and not falter. I played the Tele through a Vibrolux for the lead stuff and Lou got that sounding like a snarling pit bull in the mix.

Country Mile:

I’m a big fan of funk. James Brown, Parliament-love that kind of stuff. I had all the funk albums when I was a teenager in Hermann, Missouri. My friends thought I was odd. There is another kind of funk music that is overlooked, totally ignored. It’s what I call “rock guy funk”. It was mostly going on in the 70’s. There were rock guys that were doing there own take on funk. The best of this stuff didn’t take itself to seriously. Have you ever heard “Johnny The Fox” by Thin Lizzy? Or, the Tommy Bolin solo records? These guys were getting a bit funky but, they weren’t trying to be James Brown. And, there is this cool thing that happens when you mix rock and roll sounding guitars with a funk groove. I always liked that stuff. To me it’s fun.

That’s the kind of thing I was going for here, a fun, rock guy funk song. It’s got the Thin Lizzy sounding wah-wah and the flying monkeys from “Wizard of Oz” sing along part; “Owee-Owee”.

Some people have asked about the geographical location of the party spot, “Country Mile”. It’s a combination of my good friends Pat and Esther Talburt’s home on Table Rock Lake that has been the site of many neighborhood throw downs and 1,000 rural Missouri, biker, keg parties that I played at coming up.

I really like the way the last guitar solo fades away while still building intensity. Tommy Bolin rock guy funk trick there.


Rule Of Seven:

The question I am most often asked is; what is the rule of seven? It is a financial term. It has to do with how a sum of money, that is earning 7 percent interest, will grow left alone. A financial advisor explained this concept to me when I was involved in the management of a music publishing company. It stuck in my mind.

The lyric is about the kind of place I grew up in and how that plays out sometimes. One thing I knew, growing up, was, I wanted to go. Didn’t know where; I just wanted out. Also, I had this sense that there is always going to be have’s and have not’s. If you are in a close knit society-you can pretty well tell who is going to be a “have” and, who is going to be a “have not”. I remember feeling that maybe, that stuff is pre-ordained and that, I didn’t want to watch it come to pass.

For the most part, people who I was around as I was getting ready to make my escape, were laborers, blue collar. The lines; “You might make a living on a welder’s wage, but you grow old fast and you show your age”, might be the truest thing I’ve ever written.

When I demoed the song, it had kind of a raucous, Steve Earle feel. Lou Whitney, (producer, bass) wanted to do it more like a Don Williams groove. A little less splashy, a little more matter of fact. Joe Terry’s work on the Wurlitzer electric piano is the ingredient that brings that all together.

Cannonball:

Hillbilly, surf-rock. How fortunate, again, that The Skeletons were available.
I have a step-grandson named Garrett Coggin. He is the kind of kid we used to refer to as, “a pistol”. Shortly after he was born, I started calling him Cannonball. I thought it had a nice ring to it: “Cannonball Coggin”.

See, I’ve never had kids of my own so, a lot of the stages of development were brand new stuff for me. For instance, I had never been around a child that was learning to walk. I guess I thought that they just stand up and start walking. In truth, they do it in fits and starts. They walk a few steps, tumble, and roll, regain footing, walk a few more steps and so on. Really, they are mastering momentum and forward progress first. Then they figure a more efficient way-walking.

So, Garrett was my first up-close exposure to this phenomenon. One day, I was watching him joyously attacking the concept of motion. He was tumbling, stumbling, rolling, knocking stuff over, destroying all that was in his path and oblivious to the destruction, in an effort to get from point A to point anywhere. He was like a little human cannonball. It was beautiful. I grabbed a guitar and started playing a riff to go along with his kinetic energy and it turned out to be this song.

Naturally, I called it “Cannonball” and never once thought about the fact that the great Duane Eddy already had a guitar instrumental with the same title. Even if I had remembered, I don’t think I could of called it anything else ‘cause it just fits my little Cannonball; it’s his groove.

Soul Searching:

I was sitting around one evening and it occurred to me that in all my years of playing, I couldn’t think of any songs that I had played that were in the key of G minor; how odd. So, I started messing around and came up with a nice little kind of funky-reggae riff. I went ahead and put the riff down on tape for possible future use.

A couple of months later I was driving home from a recording session and I was listening to a Cardinal’s game on the radio. It was one of those deals where it was late at night and they had an afternoon game the next day. The broadcasters were talking about this and Mike Shannon said something like this; “Well they better sleep quick tonight”. I made a mental note. Then, a couple of innings later, Albert Pujols was batting and the pitcher threw a fastball which Albert crushed. Shannon said something like this: “Well, he tried to sneak the sunrise past the rooster, didn’t he”?

I got home, cued up the riff, blurted out those two gems and just kept going.

Robin Reese and Joy Steele came in and added the background vocals. What a blast. They had all these ideas and it all tied together.

Follow You:

What can I say?

I was contacted by a line-dance DJ in Belgium who, somehow got a copy and was playing it in a club. Said the dancers really liked it. Go figure.
Two Trains:

Funny how things come to you. This song that touches on despair came hit me on a sunny afternoon when all was right with the world. I wrote the whole thing in 15 minutes. It was one of those times when I felt like something was be given to me from an outside source.

Joy and Robin again doing the Gospel sort of thing that runs in their blood.

Originally, the plan was to have a big, fat guitar solo in the middle. When Joe came in to do the organ stuff, I wanted to hear him take a crack at it just for kicks. I loved it and we kept that instead ‘cause you just don’t hear a whole lot of that real deal B3 stuff these days and Joe nailed it.

Munk:

Tele Jazz. I was watching TV one night and had a bass nearby. I just came up with the bass line and somehow remembered it the next day. I recorded that and then I came up with the melody line. The chord structure came last. The chords and melody had some similar type dissonances to ideas I associate with Thelonius Monk. The mercenary way I went about composing was more of a punk approach than a jazz one. So, punk-Monk-Munk.

When we recorded, I told Joe that I wanted him to double the melody line with the guitar. So, he notated the whole thing, looked at me earnestly and said; “You are a sick man, Jack Pribek”. More great Hammond B3 stuff from Joe. I especially dig the 60’s sci-fi, B movie soundtrack tone he used on the head.

Trouble Ain’t Over:

A lot of these song ideas started during and directly after my first sober breaths in about 20 years. I realized it as an inadvertent, underlying theme as I looked at the songs as a group.

The lyric to this song is about one day waking up and figuring out; “Just ‘cause you’re sober right now doesn’t mean it’s smooth sailing from here on out. Matter of fact, there are some messes to deal with and, oh by the way, you will probably still have a few ass kickings coming your way”. I really see that as a healthy realization, or maybe a warning, rather than a negative approach to life.

The song is once again in the under used key of G minor. The intro guitar licks and first solo are played without a pick; sort of pluck-snapped in the manner of Albert King. Outro solo is played through a Fender Deluxe Reverb with a touch of Tube Screamer on it.