“Deep Dark Secrets” recounts a very alarming incident in which I witnessed an authority figure unexpectedly lose control and ultimately utter the haunting words, “I have done a very good job of harboring deep… Dark… Secrets.”
One of my more effective songs has been “Fear Followed,” written about the time I was robbed at gunpoint while working the graveyard shift at a gas station/convenience store in Raleigh, North Carolina. The intense subject matter always seems to intrigue people. However, even at the time, I knew and would tell folks that I had been more scared at another time in my life. With “Deep Dark Secrets,” I wanted to write about that time.
The kernel of this song came to to me during my early-morning commute. I scribbled the first line and refrain in my pocket-sized notebook in traffic and recorded a video on my iPhone at 8:28am—as soon as I got to the office...
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Prior to beginning “Graveyard,” I was successfully writing one song a month during the early months of 2013. It was difficult to flesh out—both lyrically and musically. The title and refrain come from novelist Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.
At this time, I had newly landed a job working at The University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and was averaging a 90-minute morning commute.
Aside from ‘lots of music and podcasts, I largely passed the drive-time listening to audio books—notably Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (read by Richard Poe) and Stephen King’s The Shining (read by Campbell Scott), as well as Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon and (of course) Gaiman’s Graveyard, both of which are read by the authors’ themselves to great effect...
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After having written three ballads in a row, I was very ready to write something more aggressive and upbeat.
The same Smithsonian magazine that lent me the inspiration for “Lately” also contained either a line or an article about people burning their cars on New Year’s Eve in France. I have not been able to find the mention since—or even much clarification as to why French folks were doing this—but I really seized on the rebellious notion of new-beginnings, forged in flames...
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