Whisky Priest

I was up in Boise, ID working with my former bandmates from the Scotch Greens, this bad ass punk rock band I played with for a couple years. Zander Cox, the singer, had been putting in a home studio where we were putting together sketches and demos of songs we wanted to put on our next record. However, Zander would soon learn he was to become a daddy, and that album has still yet to be made. One morning, I started playing the riff and jotted down a few lines I'd had floating around in my head. I've always been a big Graham Greene fan, and was particularly interested in modernizing the story from "The Power and the Glory." His main character, the 'Whiskey Priest,' was conflicted in his faith and his duty to the priesthood because he could not adhere to the righteous path himself, he could not help his weak will. However, it would not stop him from facing persecution and certain death by delivering mass to those who would still listen at a time when all organized religion was outlawed in his own state in Mexico. In the end, I believe this would not necessarily 'lead him from temptation and deliver him from evil,' as Matthew so precariously put it, but allow him find his own salvation, still flawed, still regretful, but in turn full of humility, nobly facing the consequences of his transgressions. As we were recording this album, I knew I was still missing a piece, something was missing, even though I had plenty of songs laying around. I dug this thing back out and began chipping away at it over the course of a few months. I thought I had it done. I was already three long verses into it, but when I was home for Christmas that year, I showed it to my friend and mentor, Mark Germino, who I'll get to in a little bit, and he said, "Well, I want in on that thing! How come it has to be finished?" He sent me a verse which I proceeded to rip apart and rearrange all the stuff I had previously written, change the entire rhyme scheme around, stick a piece in here, a piece there, until I managed to make it all fit. So then, I tried it out with the band a few times and it never worked right. There were too many words, it never changed chords, so the music was too repetitive, and nobody got it. We were about done with the record, when I went in the studio and told everyone I wanted to try something out. We started recording track by track, putting the pieces together, and they all looked at me like I was crazy and thought it would never work. I was out in the yard finding scrap metal to throw in a bag which I just dropped on the floor to get one sound. Got about four or five of us to stomp and clap, then brought in the background vocals doing the "ah oom's." Long about then they started to get it and figured out what we had on our hands. It was so infectious and unstoppable, I had to name the record after it.