Ellis Creative: PR/Marketing/Project Mgmt: Radney Foster Archives

This World We Live In Cut By Cut

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This World We Live In Cut By Cut

Drunk on Love (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown)

I had gotten together with my friend and co-producer, Darrell Brown, to write, and we were sitting at his Wurlitzer electric piano. It was one of those bright, sunny days where you don’t feel so much like working, and we were talking about the goofiness of being in love and the lines that people are silly enough to say in a bar. He started in on that sloshy groove, and we went from there. The funny thing is that Darrell beat that dang Wurlitzer so hard he knocked the ‘C’ note completely out of tune. And yes, I have done a cowboy ballerina–on the top of the Corona bar in Acuna, Mexico (which is right across from my hometown, Del Rio, Texas). My band has pictures, but they’ve been sworn to secrecy!

Sweet and Wild (Radney Foster/Jay Clementi)

I wrote this with a friend of mine who is a very talented songwriter, and a great melody writer. We were talking about how you can be so crazy passionate in the dangerous, first part of a relationship–– making love in public places, that kind of thing. That’s what started the whole idea. Sarah Buxton, who sings backup on the song, just did the sweetest harmony. She’s just signed with Lyric Street Records, and I think she’s going to be a huge star.

The Kindness of Strangers (Radney Foster)

More than anything, this song was inspired by the writings of John Steinbeck and other writers who have the smarts to figure out that we help each other even in the most dire of circumstances. No matter how low you are, there’s always somebody who God might use as a friend to you.

Big Idea (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown)

This is just fun––Darrell and I thinking about Elvis and Buck Owens and Nuclear fission. We said, who really comes up with a new idea? It doesn’t come along every day, things like Mp3’s and Harry Potter. We didn’t think anybody had every applied that to a love song, so we came up with ‘I’ve got a big idea, let’s fall in love right here.’ My favorite line is the one about Mike Nesmith’s mom inventing White Out. We were thinking, ‘how in the hell are we going to work that in?’ It took us a while, and it was a real exercise in wordsmithing, but we got it done.

Half of my Mistakes (Radney Foster/Bobby Houck)

Bobby Houck is a friend of mine who is in a really cool band out of South Carolina, The Blue Dogs. The song was born out of him telling me a quote his dad used to tell him. It’s from Disraeli, the great British politician, who said ‘half of my mistakes were from being impetuous, and the half were from being reticent.’ I was so haunted by the idea that I went into my basement studio when I got home; within 20 minutes I’d written half the song. Bobby and I got together and the rest just fell into place.

New Zip Code (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown/Dennis Matoksky)

I wrote this with Darrell and Dennis Matkosky (who’s written everything from ‘Maniac’ to huge hits for LeAnn Rimes). Dennis is from Philadelphia, and he has that sense of classic Philly songwriting. We were complaining about Nashville at the time and someone said, ‘I need a new zip code,’ and that’s where it started. We included a line in the second verse–‘Maybe south side Philly or a West Texas border town’–‘cause that’s where we’re coming from.

I Won’t Lie to You (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown)

Darrell and I were thinking about country music as the complete antithesis of country-pop today. Thinking about it in terms of when Jimmy Webb was writing for Glen Campbell or when Burt Bacharach or Roy Orbison were writing songs with this sort of vocal range and melting emotion. When Jonathan Yudkin did his string parts, we said, “Think about the records Willie Mitchell produced, the Memphis strings on those old Al Green records.” That was the sound we were going for.

Prove Me Right (Radney Foster/Stephanie Delray)

Stephanie Delray is one of my favorite co-writers; she wrote several songs with me on See What You Want To See. She has a way of speaking in images, and I think that comes through here. We were thinking about our Texas roots--the things you love and the things you believe.

Fools That Dream (Radney Foster/Jay Clementi)

Jay and I have one thing in common: we both lost a brother. It was in completely different circumstances, but we were thinking about our parents. We both have kids now, and I don’t know how you get through something like that. The son my parents lost was their first child, and I don’t know how they went on to have more–to have such faith that you could risk doing it again. The only way you get through it is that you’re foolish enough to dream that you can make love work–that you can love past death.

Never Gonna Fly (Radney Foster/Jack Ingram)

Jack Ingram and I got together to write, and we were talking about the difference between what you write when you’re in your 20s, before you had children, and what you write when in your 30, when you do. When we were writing, I was remembering trying to convince my own parents that I was going to move to Nashville and be a songwriter. You know the story, ‘that idea ain’t never gonna fly.’ Luckily for me and Jack, it has. So this song is kind of about the music business in general, but also it’s an encouragement to our own children, to stretch their wings and fly.