Well howdy everyone!! It's that time of the week again for the weekly downloads. The past few weeks we have offering cover songs (well I guess we did put Molly's Miracle Woman up last week) so this week we will showcase 2 original songs. One of Molly's and one of mine. One from the first CD and one from the new one. So sit back, have a cup of yer favorite beverage and fire one up and enjoy the tunes…

Track 4 Don't Bury Me

This is a Molly song that we recorded on Welcome To Porter Hall Tennessee around 2001. A friend told me last week that this CD is still the ultimate "break-up" record. It was really supposed to be our  "country opera" and the songs really do go back and forth from the 2 main characters and their answer/calls to each other and how they cope with broken relationships, hard times and dependencies in their small town life. Wanting to break away from the mundane, but still stuck with the comforts of their hometown environment. But I think this kinda freaked our first label out to release such an ambitious debut. So we down-played the "concept" and just let people figure out on their own what they wanted out of the songs. Anyway, I asked Molly what this song is about, and she said that she really wasn't sure. I think it is kind of about wanting to explore things in life, with the idea that before it is all said and done, wanting to return to the comforts of home and a more simple life in the country. We went for many years not performing this song live but it has recently resurfaced and I am really glad that it has. This is one of my personal favorites from the first CD along side Crosses to Hang.

Track 2 Broken Strings

This song is the opening track of our newest CD All Sinners Welcome Here. I actually wrote this song around 1996 and it was on our very first CD that was simply titled Porter Hall which came out in 1997 on Edible records in Maryland. It seems much easier to me to explain our cover songs and what they are about to me than explaining my own songs. Broken Strings is really a mess of run on sentences where the end of a line actually begins the next. By reading these blogs, you may have noticed this pattern in my writing haha. I think the idea is reaching for new ways out, sometimes you grasp for the unsteady and fall right on your face. But how will you ever know if it works or not if you don't try?  I think that is kind of the idea here. I also think that if Uncle Tupelo and They Might Be Giants had ever written a song together, it might come out something like this. Maybe this is my "Don't Let's Start?" I dunno.

Well there ya have it. Free download installment number 8. Hope you enjoy and tell your friends! Hope to see yall sometime soon down the road…

Gary
PHT