As you all certainly know by now, I’ve just finished my album Bad Apple, which I’m sure you all have a copy of. I’m immensely proud of it (those of you who know me are aware that I’m immensely proud of everything, so no great surprise there), and in many ways, it’s the album I’ve always wanted to make. There’s not a lot of anything you’d call “folk” on it – I’m a carefully disguised rock’n’roller, and it’s a full band album with a lot of great songwriting on it, and a good deal of anger, and more than a couple genuine bangers (thanks, band!). But this is not everybody’s jam.
I have a friend – an old and dear friend, let’s call her Sky Queen, she’ll know why – whom I’ve known since college. She has every single recording I’ve ever made, including several early compilations which did not otherwise see the light of day. Essentially, she’s listened to every song worth listening to that I’ve ever written, and a good number that probably weren’t worth listening to at all. And I’ve always heard from Sky Queen after every new recording, and so I sent her a copy of Bad Apple and waited. And – crickets.
I’m not a patient man. So, oh, four or five seconds later, I wrote and asked her, puppy-like, whether she liked it. And the answer was – well, not really. It turns out that the lyrics were too dark for her, and the bangers were a bit too bang-y – I believe her exact words were, about one of the songs, “I feel like you’re coming after me. With a hammer.” And it got me thinking.
Sure, I’ve been angry lately. Everybody seems to be angry lately. Either our president is fantastic and the people who hate him are evil, or our president is evil and the people who hate him are fantastic, depending on who the president is. But bile isn’t my brand – my brand is funny and preposterous and rueful, and maybe there wasn’t quite enough of that on the album. So I gave myself an assignment: write a song that Sky Queen would like.
Folks, I give you “Hard Candy Shell”.
Like many people, I have my secrets, and one of them is that I’m an enormous softie, once you get past the moat and the machine gun emplacements and my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and her enormous, frightening claws. And I wanted the narrator to share this secret, and I couldn’t think of a better place to draw this picture than a neighborhood bar, with its frequently stereotypical macho posturing (there may be one of these around the corner from my house, but i don’t know, because I’m scared to go in). It’s a slight song, but it empathizes with its narrator and his minor predicament in a way that I should probably strive for a bit more often.
I got a thumbs up from Sky Queen for this one. Let’s see what happens next time.