Hello All,
Welcome to the next installment of the inner thoughts I have about the songs on the new album. The response has been really encouraging so far. I am open to hearing your thoughts about the songs. I love the feedback and look forward to hear how the songs/lyrics hit you.
In “The Lights of Vegas” a person leaves his life and family to put it all in a slot machine. Theres a pilgrimage of an empty kind. “When you’re on your last dollar, you still got a chance/ before the sun rises you get one last dance/ so close your eyes, you’re a good luck charm/ feel the weight pull the arm those who leave us don’t believe us/ if the they could see us now…”
“Hurricane Angel” is about a hurricane Katrina victim looking for God and a reason to believe. All of these far away characters- the president in air force one, an insurance guy in Delaware, and a credit card worker in India seem to be in control of his fate. He looks for an angel for some hopefulness. Hurricane Angel could be the best narrative song I’ve ever written. Its sad desperate hopeful in equal parts. I was having all these issues with debt and bills and I heard about Katrina victims being kicked out of their trailers because the trailers were poisonous. It was like a reality sandwich. There’s always someone hurting more than the next person out there. I applied some of my problems to a fictitious character- always looking out to someone controlling his fate from a distance- a credit card guy in India-an insurance guy in Delaware, the president flying over in Airforce one. No one right there-right now. He ends up asking God for help- heavens even far away, but we pull hope out of it somehow. I’m proud of that song but I don’t find myself feeling entirely responsible for writing it-it kind of wrote itself. A lot of these songs were pulled from the ether like they’d been there all along. I can’t explain it better than that. There was a news cast that talked about all the people being kicked out of the FEMA trailers, and they were sleeping 16 to a trailer. “I took a flat bed Ford up to Baton Rouge/ with four worn souls and one old cork screw/ You can drown New Orleans, but you can’t drown the blues/ so bartender, pour away… ”
“Heaven’s Wherever You Are” is a song about recognizing the beauty in your life, both internally (who you are) and externally (what’s around you). The song is playful, but was written for people who are chronically sad. “I know this ’bout the blues/ it only prints the bad news/ while ignoring the miracle/ so I stand and applaud/ with Buddha, Krishna, and God/ cause all this beauty’s hysterical.”
You can download the song “The Day After Everything Changed” for free here at my website ellispaul.com/index.php?page=blog&category=&display=4413
