DEFYING GRAVITY Like a solid relief pitcher, Jesse Winchester is a source of songs I return to again and again. I love the message in this song, simple and to the point. I never do dream I may fall-and if I do fall, what the hell.

SURVIVE There are some days on the road when you have the blues and nothing will get rid of them. You just have to ride it out like a bad cold or a storm, and things will eventually get better. This song came out of one of those spells, and I did survive.

INCOMMUNICADO The day John Wayne died, I drove to the top of Independence Pass above Aspen and walked along the Continental Divide. Somehow Travis McGee crept into my mind as I pondered the incredible vista. After a Mexican meal in Leadville, I wrote this song on the way back to Aspen.

I HEARD I WAS IN TOWN I'm amused by the rumors that crop up out of nowhere about me and what I've done. I have been spotted at parties by drug agents when I was actually two thousand miles away. I have bought ocean liners. I have been seen on stage in countries where I have never set foot, and have played golf on courses that I have never seen. Word just seems to get around.

BALLAD OF SPIDER JOHN Willis Alan Ramsey is one of the great Texas troubadours who has built a musical legacy. I think he is one of the best writers I have ever known, and I hope to one day hear that he has made another album.

LITTLE MISS MAGIC When Savannah Jane was born, my world was definitely altered. Once, when she was very small, she pointed to a spot on the globe and told me she had been a princess in China. Before she could speak I would watch her follow the blades of the ceiling fan with her big brown eyes, and I couldn't help but to be a proud father. Besides, if you don't write a song about your daughter, you will go to hell.

CALIFORNIA PROMISES Steve Goodman came to the studio in L.A. when we were just about to finish the One Particular Harbor album and played this song for me. I had always wanted to try to get Earl Klugh to play one of my records, and I guess the God's were smiling on us. My dear friend Rita Coolidge was singing background vocals and somehow got in touch with Earl, who was playing a gig in L.A. He came to the studio. Earl was a true gentleman and was taken back by Robert Greenidge's steel drum parts and the chance to meet Jack Nicholson-I'd called to let Jack know Earl was playing. Jack was an even bigger Earl Klugh fan than I was, and it was fun to watch them give each other compliments. Just another magic night in "show bidness."

IF THE PHONE DOESN'T RING, IT'S ME  This phrase sort of sums it all up: "Good days' bad days, and going half mad days." We all have them. This is as close as I can get to a sad song.

AFRICAN FRIEND For the amount of shit that the Haitian people have had to endure over the centuries, they are the warmest and friendliest people I have come across in my travels. This song was written after a trip to Port-Au-Prince and a wild night in the old casino that made me feel as if I were in a Bogey movie. Those damn Bogey movies
have put me in some tight spots as I've tried to create fact out of fiction.

EVERLASTING MOON You have never heard this before unless you were at the lives shows in Atlanta or Cincinnati in the summer of '90. Matt Betton and I penned this. I love the idea that somebody steals the moon and moves it to a better place. Who but a bunch of baby boomers could conceive such a notion?

PRE-YOU I never learn much from listening to myself, but other people are a wealth of information. This title came while I was riding an elevator at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. A sailor was telling his buddy that he had run into an old girlfriend on the beach in Mexico while he was on his honeymoon. "What did you tell your wife?" the buddy asked. "I just said, 'Oh baby, she was pre-you.'" By the time the elevator hit the ground floor, I had the first verse, and I took the roots of this tune to New York and finished it with Ralph Macdonald and Bill Salters. Ralph produced this track and got
Grover Washington Jr. to play the solo (in case you think you've heard this style of horn before).

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Back in prehistoric times (the sixties) when I was working on Bourbon Street, I used to go to the Ivanhoe Piano Bar on my break and listen to a couple of local singers called the Neville Brothers. Needless to day, we have all made it off Bourbon Street and on to better things, but I still don't think there are too many bands around today who can compare to Art, Cyril, Charlie and Aaron when they harmonize. It was a thrill to work with them on this song which was one if three that I wrote with Art, Will Jennings, and Mike Utley one summer in New Orleans. The other two songs eventually made it onto Neville albums, but this one did not. It was inspired by late-night television ads and the St. Charles Avenue streetcar in New Orleans.

COAST OF MARSEILLES I believe that this is one the best songs I have ever heard. Keith Sykes wrote this years back when he was hanging around Key West, and it felt as if it had been molded for me. I ever get tired of singing this song.

ISLAND I wrote this with David Loggins. I thought back to a time when I had been holed up in San Salvador in the Bahamas waiting for the weather to break, watching how simple island people live and wondering if I could ever really slow down that much. I am still wondering.

HE WENT TO PARIS Chicago is where I truly cut my teeth as a performer, working as the opening act at the Quiet Knight. I opened for a variety of people from Neil Sedaka to Bob Marley, and when I got frustrated with the crowds, the old one-armed clean-up man with the big German shepherd always consoled me. It took me a few days of asking to find out Eddie was more than a janitor. He was a gifted painter and a wonderful pianist. We would stay up after the club closed, and he would sing me songs from the Spanish Civil War where he had fought as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against the Fascists. Eddie Balchowsky was indeed an inspiration. He was larger than life, and as Mark Twain said "he'd gone out into the territory". This song is a tribute to his spirit.

STARS FELL ON ALABAMA I have been called a cornball and a hopeless romantic. I appreciate those labels, and I don't apologize for my feelings. I have always loved the Tin Pan Alley kind of songs that came out of writing teams in the forties. This one, of course, was known to me as a kid, and I like to play it at shows now. It's fun to see teenagers mouth the words to a song they might never heard if I hadn't been such a cornball.

CHANGING CHANNELS This was written for Isabella, the imaginary heroine of my short story " I Wish Lunch Could Last Forever". I miss her and catch up with her life in the next story. I assure you she is still changing channels.

TWELVE VOLT MAN Michael Nesmith once told me a story about a man he ran into down in Baja who is the unknown inspiration for this song. During the Baja race, Michael had broken down somewhere near East Jesus and went to a small village to wait for his repair team. He ran into an American, a fisherman who lived in a small hut with what he called his "essentials". He had a collection of my albums, packaged margarita mix from America, an old Waring blender, and a tape player hooked up to a peculiar power system made out of a Honda generator and a Sears Die Hard battery. It seems he would fish all week, and on Friday night, he and his friends would hook up the blender and tape player and make margaritas while they sang along to my songs. This ceremony would last until the gas for the generator dried up. I got the inspiration to write this when I was in Isla Mujeres, a small island near Cancun, where life had escaped most of the twentieth century. The tough part was rhyming Die Hard, but with a few inspiring margaritas, the word came. This is one of my favorite songs.