Just a Spark

Just a Spark

I was a freshman in college when I wrote this song. I wrote this about a particular gal that I had a crush on.  It's strange, because the song doesn't really mention my point of view in it.  It's almost entirely about her, and what I imagined to be her point of view.  I'll never know if I was close in my assessment or not.  The irony is that I was friends with the leather-man, I think. I know I wanted to be Bob Dylan, but I don't Dylan would write a song like this. 

For a few years after I wrote this, it was as close to a hit as I came. People seemed to like the song.  It was a long song, no doubt, but it was an interesting story.  True, wolves don't bark (as the chorus implies), but the thin line between wolves (who are wild) and dogs (who are loyal) might be the point.  Maybe the hungry wolves are dogs. I wish I could say.  I know what the song means to me, but I can't say that's what I intended when I wrote it. 

The song seems to be about this tension between a woman who has the power to hypnotize those around her, and yet seems helpless to the powers that surround her.  Perhaps I identified with her- at least in the song.  They say that a stopped clock is right twice a day, and for whatever reason I managed to write my best (or favorite) verse in this song:

The punishment and all the pain

Are the only truths that remain

That's the price you pay for being sane

Under the strain.

I think at this point in my life, having written about a hundred songs or so, I felt confident enough in my writing ability (if not, as a person), to make a habit of rhyming triplets instead of couplets.  I hadn't even noticed that I had done it, until a fellow songwriter pointed it out to me.  I have done it several times since.  I wonder if three rhymes are better than two.  I know they're harder to do. 

This was one of the songs that I had to record for this album.  It began as me and an acoustic guitar, and as we recorded the song, we kept adding more to it.  Bass, drums, viola, glockenspiel, etc.  It's almost peculiar that this is one of the few songs on the album without backing vocals, but the song called for something more isolated. 

I recorded the guitar solo at the end piece by piece, and I was satisfied with the results, but like many tracks it was "lost". I then came back and re-recorded it note for note in one pass. Maybe Colin thought it needed another pass, and he was trying to trick me into re-recording it.  It wouldn't surprise me. 

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