Kicktone Recording Group

 

“Smile at Me” is another song of mine with a winding history. The melody was finalized in the spring of 1986 in a piano practice room on the Ole Miss campus. There were no lyrics to the original song, as it was intended to be a simple “New Age” piano solo in the style of Windham Hill’s George Winston. A Mizzou friend had given me three Windham Hill albums the summer before as a college graduation gift, and it had taken me several months to absorb and develop my l...

I wrote the basic tune of “Almost Gone” in Columbia, Missouri back in 1983. My inspiration was hearing “Someday Man” by The Monkees one random day, and noticing that its initial chord changes and the changes in “Here Comes My Girl” by Tom Petty were practically the same. Very consciously, I sat down with my guitar and attempted to find a way to use a similar chord structure to create a new song for The Trend. What I came up with was fast, loud, catchy...

I started law school at Ole Miss in the fall of 1985 after having graduated from The University of Missouri the previous spring. I felt confident about my survival as a law student, and knew that a legal education would help me in a variety of ways in the future. In the back of my mind, though, I was conflicted, and feared that I might be prematurely giving up on my true dream, life as a power pop musician. Some well-meaning, but nay-saying friends advised me against this law school thing,...

I wrote the B-side of The Trend’s one and only vinyl single in a burst of creativity during that magical summer of 1979. The chord based riff was the key to the song, and it was a true gift when my Lotus acoustic and I stumbled upon it. I mean, how could a riff of mine resemble both The Monkees and The B-52’s? Somehow, without sounding TOO much like either one of those acts, it did.

The lyrics were simple and direct, with no thought put into any s...

I composed the original version of "Florida Girl" in 1981, right around the time I graduated from high school. The first melody was deliberately simple, in the vein of "She's The One" by The Ramones and several early Beach Boys songs. The lyrics, also simple, were inspired by a girl from Florida named Sybil that I liked very much.

While it became clear the following year that Sybil and I were never going to be an item, the song she inspired lived on. It contin...