Wendy and Peter:

My family and I were staying at the Pop Century Resort at Walt Disney World. It's on the lower end of the Disney resorts, price-wise, but some of my fondest memories are of being there together, playing in the pool or eating dinner in the cafeteria.

I had taken my ukulele instead of my guitar due to space restrictions. We had driven from Ohio to Florida in our minivan with another family.

One afternoon, we were in our room getting ready to head to the computer pool. It's a pool with a large replica of a laptop hanging from a nearby building.

I was strumming the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Scar Tissue." That song goes: F - C - Dm, but then I added A7/C7 as the last chord in the progression, which changed the feeling. A7 didn't do it. Neither did C7. It needed the combo.

The mermaids and the pirates haven't captured me so far
I've invited this invasion, you stand here by my side
With your ribbons and your thimbles and your eyes filled up with stars
I look at you with wonder, and now I realize

With your gentle hands, warm as sand,
You sooth the frightened child
Your delicate smell and your mannerisms
Threaten my untamed wild

When you come near my instinct is to run...

We had just just ridden Peter Pan's Flight, based on the 1953 Disney cartoon version of Peter Pan. That version of the story is lighthearted and full of adventure.

But it doesn't really capture the conflict that Peter feels about Wendy: he's fascinated by her and drawn to her femininity, but he has no intention of giving up his boyish wildness and freedom. 

The 2003 version does capture that, along with bittersweet feeling of the unfinished bonus-feature ending, from J.M. Barrie's original book and play, where Peter comes back to the nursery to find things have changed.

Anyway, I wanted to get some of that conflict into my song. I was 30 when when my wife and I got married. A few years later, I had just bought this really cool shark kite that I planned to fly as soon as possible when my wife showed me the double lines of our pregnancy test. Clearly, I had some growing up to do.

The indians and the fairies are calling me to play
And I'm thinking up excuses for the first time in my life
In the morning you say you're leaving, inside I'm begging you to stay
But I won't grow up, you can't fill me up with your husbands and wives

With your gentle hands, warm as sand,
You sooth the frightened child
Your delicate smell and your mannerisms
Threaten my untamed wild

When you come near my instinct is to run...

Standing there in our Disney hotel room, we had two little girls and my wife was pregnant with our little boy. Like Peter looks at Wendy, I am in awe of my wife's intelligence, hard work, sweetness and thoughtfulness. I guess all of those things came together at the right time. 

I needed an ending, so I borrowed one of the best ever:

Wendy, tramps like us, baby we were born to run...

Strange Perfume:

This is a fictionalized retelling of the way I met my wife.

They met at the time clock
He was starting night shift
They used the same Macintosh

At the time, we both worked for a newspaper in the production department, meaning that we put the newspapers together, both the editorial content and the ads.

She left him fortune cookies
He liked the smell of her strange perfume
They took the same day off

I was on an ad team, creating display ads for real estate agents, plant nurseries, local doctors and dentists, and so on. She worked on a different ad team and also built pages. The day shift and night shift shared computers, all Macs.

They met at the museum
They found brilliant colors everywhere
The sun shone brighter

He searched into her green eyes
They were telling him a story
Everything comes out fine
But with lots of complications...

Which is how it goes when you're falling for someone. Everything seems better, more colorful, more meaningful.

The main chord progression was my attempt to sounds like the Posies' "Dream All Day" but but without learning that song. I find that can be a good starting point for a new song.

But the break, where the song slows down, was really inspired by my brother-in-law and bandmate, Clay Justice. It's not so much that he plays in that style; it's just he had told me how much he liked songs that change tempo, get faster or slower, and so on. So I doubt I would have slowed the song down without his influence. 

Plus, I was trying to sound like the Beatles.

Prayers, diapers laughter
Tears, money, mercy
They built a life together
The end, gratefully ever after...

I am grateful to God for what I have, my wife, kids, job, food, shelter, clothes, enough money to give, for his mercy and grace.

Hope you enjoy. Peace.

Glimmering City (Dystopian Novel):

I remember the Apple commercial from 1984. I've read that it only aired twice, and was only broadcast once, during the Super Bowl, on national TV.

I had not read the novel Nineteen Eighty Four at that point, but I had gathered its general plot and meaning through popular culture.

Many dystopian stories, movies and the like have come and gone since 1984. This song is my attempt to add to that list.

You don't know how far I have come
Tunneled through the earth
Walked the burning sands
Swam across the river
To reach the Glimmering City where you live
On the hundredth floor

At first I had lyrics about overthrowing an oppressive dictatorship, but as the song developed I decided to imply that theme rather than state it outright.

You left your reflection in a broken mirror
I pieced it together and traced it here
I see your worried look so let me say
Why would you want to be normal anyway?

So the scene is a sleek, modern high-rise apartment. There's a beautiful girl living a comfortable life, tended by mechanical servants. There's a boy standing in front of her, looking somewhat dirty and wild. Is it a literal mirror that he refers to, or maybe an electronic device storing her image? I don't know. But the image of her face has moved him to action.

Leave these machines behind
Come join my rebel friends
We'll build a who new life from our bare hands
Leave these machines behind
Come join my rebel friends
We'll build a who new life from our bare hands...

I had written some sketchy lyrics using guitar, and I had a tune in my head. I made it pretty far in the songwriting process before I decided to start over with new music and re-written lyrics. The music had come out too somber. The lyrics were more angry than sweet and persuasive. 

I turned to the ukulele. I've found that ukuleles are usually dismissed as novelty instruments, but I think of mine as a simplified mandolin. It gives a song a small, rustic sound. 

After some trial and error, I found a chord progression that I had not played before: F to BbMaj7 to C. It was the airy Maj7 that opened up the song for me, letting in light and hope.

A common dystopian theme is the government strictly enforcing a bland existence, with few opportunities for pleasure, in order to control the masses.

However, as seen in Brave New World and Wall-E, it's much more effective to control a population by saturating the people with consumerism and entertainment. 

If a dystopian government really knows what it is doing, it will provide manufactured controversies in the news, constantly changing tastes in fashion and so on. It would be hard to tell the fictional news from the real thing, and the average citizen wouldn't know or care to know the difference. That's what's going on in the Glimmering City. 

So it's a hard sell for a young man with few possessions to arrive on the hundredth floor and ask this young woman to give up her luxurious life. He really only has one argument on his side: an emotional appeal to her sense of adventure and the unknown. 

When's the last time you felt cold?
When's the last time you felt scared?
When's the last time you felt alive?
Come take my hand, I'll lead you there...

I have always loved the song The Sounds of Silence, even when I was a little kid. It's funny to think that such a weird, dark, quiet song could have been popular on the radio in its own time. But it's that strange beauty that and storytelling that gets our attention, even today.

I had been reading the book of 1 Kings, where King Jeroboam commands that his workers make two golden calfs for the people to worship. It made be think of the neon god from Paul Simon's song, so I quote two lines in my song as a tribute.

And the people bowed an prayed
To the neon god they'd made
I hear security coming down the corridor
They're beating on the door, beating down the door!

Now the young man has made his case. Finally, there's a decision that needs to be made.

Leave these machines behind
Come join my rebel friends
We'll build a who new world from our bare hands...
Leave these machines behind
Come join my rebel friends
We'll build a who new life from our bare hands...