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Ellis Paul

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Jan 15 2010 - The Day After Everything Changed Musings- Final Installment!

Hello All! Welcome to the final Installment of my inner thoughts on the songwriting and production of the new album! Please feel free to make comments and leave your own thoughts about the songs and songwriting, I love to hear what y'all have to say.

"Dragonfly" is a little zen love song written about a dragonfly that makes it's way into a bedroom after a woman leaves a man's house, The dragonfly represents the woman: how did she come to me? It was written with Sam Baker, an Americana star down in Austin. I recorded this one in my bedroom. "Red dress on my door step/ honeysuckle blooming through the front porch screen/ perfume on my pillowcase/ empty bed in an empty room/ there's a dragonfly flying and a red dress hanging from the moon"

"Sometime, Someplace" is about a bar in Charlottesville, Va. It's most famous for being the place where the Dave Mathews band got their start. There are some references to them in the song, which is about finding love, "There's a ghost of a rock star, playing his horn in the corner where the fiddle player sways/ there's a crowd at the front bar, all the locals and the cronies talking 'bout the sugar days/ she tells me gypsy fortunes, lies about the rain/ I love the way the bartender whispers my name/ I want to stand up on a bar stool, shout out to the night/ I don't need a love forever, I just need some tonight"

"Once Upon a Summertime" was written looking back at the innocence of my first girlfriend. I took a lot of the details right out of our lives...
'"the drive in we'd meet/ in the Buick's backseat/ and find the crackerjack prize in the dark/ back home your father would come out and say 'What was the movie about?' I said a ghost, you said a great white shark"

"Waking Up to Me'" is about a long drive back to a loved one. Based on a drive I took from Maine to Virginia to get back home. Everyone has had one of those drives at some point—one that they never forget taking. "Out on the highway lately, the miles, they just fall back/ they roll beneath the wheels behind me/ it's a toll road winding/ you give time, but you never get time back/ just an aching that reminds me"

"Walking after Midnight" is a hybrid song with Patsy Cline and Sam Bakers "Change". It's a medley, I fell into it one night horsing around on the guitar and I liked the way the imagery played against each other in the two songs. "There was a dry good store, a flower shop, a barber with no nose, one alcoholic cop, a beauty parlor were they sat in chrome chairs, and it smelled just like they burned some poor lady's hair"

"The Cotton's Burning" is about a colonel in the 14th Tennessee regiment in the Civil War. He's headed back home after the Fall of Richmond. I am civil war nut and had to read some history to get away with this one. "Tell your captain, I have come claim my dead/ and let the flags of truce arise/ Richmond's burning all the politicians fled/ we are te last men to survive..."

"Paper Dolls" was written for a New Year's Eve wallflower whole alone at a party in a big city. New Year's Eve can be a lonely holiday. Kristian Bush is in a duet with me here, and the voices flow like two different streams of thought- One motherly on the outside offering comfort and one internally having doubt, "All the people at the party left you/ sitting at the table all alone/ you can hear their voices chatter through confetti/ you're alone"

"Nothing Left to Take" is a timeline on a break up from seconds to minutes to hours.
"In the first thirty seconds, she told him she was leaving/ she picked up a one way suitcase/ he stood there disbelieving/ then a minute passed, she turned and walked/ left him without the means to talk, she was history"