Slightly forgotten in the hubbub of the June 2 release of "Through Private Wars", was my brief thoughts on the last of its songs, track #10, On Yer Own.
This is a song I barely remember writing. I came partially awake one night, in the dead of winter, with (apparently) a story to tell, and I felt my way to the bathroom (the only room in the house with JUST A LITTLE bit of light) and scrawled this lyric sheet into the nearest notebook. Went back to bed, went back to sleep, and woke in the morning with no recollection of getting up. Months later, paging through my notebooks looking for an original draft of something else entirely, I came across it, and was driven to put a melody behind it. It's one of my favorite lyrics, really; I find it to be a little haunting and a lot mysterious (largely as I absolutely do not remember what inspired it: a dream of birds?).
In the studio, Rob brought an extremely dense acoustic guitar arrangement, David recorded and mixed them all brilliantly (as he does), and we are all the beneficiaries. It's maybe the most secretly complicated arrangement on the record (only he and I make any noise on it at all, but I think he used three different guitars in three different tunings).
This song was slated to sit right in the middle of the album until I got the first draft of the masters from Dave. Hearing the record, in order, with a proper mastering balance, told me in no uncertain terms that this song did not belong where I had put it, but needed to live in its own space, all summer night sky and gentle breeze through the woods and fields. We found some crickets, and let it breathe freely. Live, I fade this out manually (by playing and singing softer and softer), but I'm glad it resolves here, as it caps the record nicely.