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Indianola

1. CROWDED 2. YOU DON'T KNOW A THING 3. YOU'RE MY LIFE 4. STILL TRYIN' TO FIND MY WAY AROUND 5. EMPTY SPACES 6. WHAT'S WRONG WITH RIGHT NOW 7. THE RIVER'S WORKIN' 8. I WON'T LET YOU LEAD ME DOWN 9. THE COACH 10. PRELUDE (HOME) 11. FLATLANDS 12. BLUESTUNE 13. INDIANOLA

CROWDED

Ira Dean from Trick Pony and Jason Young, my band’s percussionist, are both comedy guys. I wrote “I Don’t Have to Be Me ‘Til Monday” with Jason, but with Ira and him together I thought, “We’re not going to write anything today” because we were in such a great mood. But this happened really quickly. So I grabbed an acoustic guitar and my wah-wah pedal and Ira played bass. Jason did the percussion. Then I brought in Gary Morse to play steel and banjo. The song talks about the country and the city. I think the most important line is, “I moved out to the country, but the city keeps moving in.” So I wanted that in the sound, the urban/rural contrast, the struggle between instruments.


YOU DON'T KNOW A THING

This was the second song that Radney and I wrote together. It came together really easily. We were both on the same page because it was a song we both have lived. It talks about growing up, making mistakes, experiencing life, and what you learn from that experience. So often in our youth, we're pretty bold, courageous and full of life, but until you've hit a few bumps in the road and learned from your mistakes, you really don't know a thing. With this being my first single released off of the record, I feel really good.


YOU'RE MY LIFE

This looks like it could be the next single. That’s the first song that Radney and I wrote together. I’d been on a 20-day run, had come home and hadn’t seen Gwen and the kids in so long. I’d gotten home at five in the morning, so I didn’t go sleep. You know, sometimes when you’re the most tired, I think you’re the most creative. I remember thinking, “Music has been my life. Gwen’s my life, and my kids are my life. When I’m off the road, I miss the road. When I’m on the road, I miss my family.” All these lines were coming to me. But when Radney came over, the big chorus soared. When we left each other that day, we both felt completely energized. That’s why we got together again to write “You Don’t Know a Thing.”


STILL TRYIN' TO FIND MY WAY AROUND

I wrote this with two of my favorite writers. We met at a Mexican restaurant. Phillip walked in and said, “I was getting lost. I tell you, I can’t find my way around.” Neal and I looked at each other and said, “That’s it.” So we ate, and then we raced to the house. The thing was written in our heads before we even sat down.


EMPTY SPACES

My dad called me one day and said he'd had this dream. He'd never done that before. He was 70 years old at the time. He said, "I think you should write a song about this. I had a dream where I saw myself as an infant. My heart and soul were there, but they were hollow. Then I woke up and got myself a snack in the middle of the night. I went back to sleep and had the same dream again. But this time I saw my life at my age now. My heart and soul were full. And I could see all the things that I've done in this great life, and I'm full." I called Rafe immediately and said, "Rafe, I'm coming over."

This song sounds like nothing else on the record. I tried recording it three different ways and discovered that the only way to do it is simply and gently.


WHAT'S WRONG WITH RIGHT NOW

It’s funny: I think I was giving advice to myself in this song, and I didn’t even know it until later. The words just came out, and I had no thought process. That just happens sometimes. They were just words. It wasn’t until months later that I realized what John and I had done. I wrote this at the same time as “I Won’t Let You Lead Me Down.”


THE RIVER'S WORKIN'

We were shooting the "Waitin' on Joe" video on the Mississippi. The captain and I were alone on the boat. He walked out with a cup of coffee, and he was so emotional when he said this. You couldn't tell if it was sweat or tears rolling down from his eyes. And there's no telling what he's gone through in his life. He goes, "The River's Workin,'" like he was toasting or saluting it. I looked out, and there were so many barges and tugs.

So when I came home after shooting the video, I told Rafe about what happened and how moved I was by it. I remembered the father of a friend of mine who was a boat captain. When he would come home after long stretches on the river, he was never really "home." He was always kind of moving around and couldn't settle in. I think the water had taken over his soul. I told Rafe that story and we started writing this song.

I WON'T LET YOU LEAD ME DOWN

I was ticked off, and the song is about all of that. It’s about where I was, at a very frustrating point in my life. It came from the back of the bus. I’d written the chorus and the first verse on the road. The next week, I was writing with Walt Wilkins. I said, “What do you think?” He says, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So we tweaked some things, and we wrote a good, visual second verse and bridge. He was great to write with.


THE COACH

I know Brett Favre, Jim McMahon and John Daly. I’ve become friends with a lot of great athletes. We do benefit shows together, we see each other and they talk about their coaches. And that got me thinking about mine. I had the coach in this song. I can picture him right now. I love the line where it says, “If you can live through me, you can get through life.” I co-wrote this with Neal Coty and A.J. Masters.


PRELUDE (HOME)

I wrote that by myself on the bus. I wanted to be able to say something like this on this record. It’s kind of a musical prelude where now I get to take you home to the Delta. Which is what we do in concert. It had another verse, but it was so bad I threw it away. I was done. My dad goes, “You should finish that.” I said, “Dad, it is finished.” There was nothing else left to say. We recorded this at home, sitting in a circle. It was a spiritual moment.


FLATLANDS

This was recorded live, in one take. It was easy, because we’ve been performing it live for so long. There are times when I have felt dizzy in my life, and one of them was when we performed this at Mississippi Rising, the Hurricane Katrina benefit concert. I walked off stage, and Morgan Freeman was to my right, and Samuel L. Jackson was to my left. Morgan said, “Steve, you’re a different beast when you do that song.” He loved it. Samuel L. goes, “Now THAT is how you do it.” I thought that was so cool. I’ve had the song for a long time. Roger Murrah tweaked it for me in 1991.


BLUESTUNE (feat. Jason Young)

This thing has developed a life of its own. People are standing up and going crazy when we perform it in concert. All that high vocal stuff that Jason is doing, when we play it, the people are all doing it along with him.


INDIANOLA

When the Governor gave me my day in Mississippi, I was talking to this lady at the Governor's Mansion. I remembered, "Weren't you married to a friend of mine years ago?" She goes, "Yeah." I said, "What happened?" She said, "Well, he was at the end of Greenville." I never heard another word she said. When she said that somebody was at the end of the town, all these things started going through my head. That night I was driving us back to Greenville. My wife and my kids were all asleep, and I saw a sign that said, "Indianola." I started thinking about, "the end of Indianola." There was probably a 20-mile stretch before Greenville, and that's when I wrote the words. When I woke up the next morning, I grabbed an old guitar that I keep at my parent's house and the music came out exactly how I imagined.