Come to Jesus

I wrote "Some Kinda Change" after Lisa's Hotcakes stopped playing (we never actually broke up). T-Bone and I practised it in V+T, but I felt it was more a song for me or some band in my head than for the duo. It needed a bass.

The song is some kind of story, but I didn't really set out to tell a story. The suggestions of story evolved out of word play. I seem not to be able to write about nothing. As with several of my songs, there's a relationship in it. The relationship in "The Easy Way" is hetero, but this one's a lez thing. Lesbians having adventures. People in my songs have the adventures I don't have.

That snarly guitar near the centre? For years, that and the vocal were the song, and this production stuck close to that feel. In fact, that guitar is a scratch guitar, the one you play first as a guide so you can then add other instruments. I thought I'd replace it, but I liked it better than every other take.

I played live drums again, like "Nasty Boy." I hit the snare on 2 and 4 with eighth notes on the floor tom, all the way through except for the stops in the middle section. I'm old. It was exhausting but exhilarating, but I was happy with the result.

I wish I could have recorded the drums better, but for some reason it had not yet occurred to me that I own a PA, which has a mixing board with six inputs that I could have used to mix several drum mics into the stereo signal that my computer interface accepts. In future, whenever I want to record live drums.

"Some Kinda Change" goes back to my roots in simple, hard-edged music: Neil Young, Keith Richards, the Stooges, the Gun Club, the Jim Carroll Band.  There's sin in here, as in some of my other songs. There's even some Jesus. My approach to music and art are to struggle against both personal and human limitations and to make something good from whatever bits and pieces of talent I have. This song is a good illustration.