I remember writing “Why” when I was living with my girlfriend in Inwood. She was an intensely intuitive person, and we had had a whirlwind romance in Louisville, before moving up to New York City. I think the song reflected the challenges of returning to New York after my bout with cancer. I was 28 years old, and I was finding it difficult to find work. Five years earlier it had been a different story. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be in New York. Jules was a much more certain person. She would go after what she wanted and was careful to see it come to pass.
I often wondered how she would know me so well, when I didn’t seem to know myself. How did she know what I was thinking of? Thing is, she was pretty accurate about a lot of my stuff. She was a director and very good at assessing people’s motivations, which I suppose included me. I was struggling to move forward in my life, though I had been playing with Andrew Emer and Phelim White by this point.
The song came quickly, which is a surprise given that it was often in the top two of Navigators’ songs. It became our regular opener, because it was an easy song to tap into. I don’t think it ever sounded bad, which was always a good way to start a set. Despite the fact that we played it nearly every show, we did not have much luck recording it.
Phelim White, Andrew Emer, David Wallace and I had recorded a version, which might have been good, but we ran into some problems trying to get the recordings after we had recorded it. We have may have tried it at Cowboy Technical when we recorded Glory, Glory, but it didn’t come together there either. It wasn’t until I was playing the song with Naren Rauch and Brian Griffin that the song took its current shape. A lot of folks thought that it needed a bridge, and Naren came up with some chords for the bridge. I actually had an extra verse that I had cut early on, but it worked with the new chords just fine. So the next time we recorded it, it sounded a lot like it does now.
“Why” was one of the songs that the band was adamant we record at Dangerous Music, when we went to record Love and War, Vol. 1. It went off without a hitch. At least the basic tracks. We added vocals, and the song sounded pretty good, but there was no money to mix the album, the label had pulled out, and we had no way to promote it, so it just sat on the shelf.
About a year later, the song was resurrected by Bob Brockman at NuMedia studio. We added a few pieces here and there, and the song gradually started to sound like a hit. We even got some great feedback from industry professionals, who said that if we could put together a few more songs like it, we would be well on our way. But we didn’t really have anything else like it. I mean, we had lot’s of good songs, but I didn’t write to a particular style. While I understand that’s harder to market, I think that’s not a reflection on the quality of the work. So despite its promise, the song didn’t go anywhere.
Well, that's not entirely true. That version made it onto the soundtrack of my friend, Spencer Parsons movie, I'll Come Running. It's the song you hear as the credits roll. I thought that “I Crossed the Water” would be preferable, but they both work for different reasons. If you haven't seen the movie, it's fantastic!
Somewhere along the way, we lost all the tracks that we had recorded with Bob at NuMedia. It had been a chaotic time as the studio was shutting down and relocating. Ultimately, I began rebuilding the song at my home studio. I added Tonya Buckler’s backing vocals to complete the arrangement.
When Andrew McKenna Lee began to mix the song, he moved away from the straight rock vibe, and really pulled out the acoustics. It sounded like the perfect amalgamation of rock and folk, which I suppose it is.