In 1998, I was living in my parent’s house having recently moved home from New York City. I began writing this song, and a ton of other songs, since all I had going on was promoting my music. No social life. I made it as far as the second verse and got stuck. I met a woman I had gone to college with, who was passing through Louisville. Let’s call her “Glory.” I was madly in love. I had a habit of fixating on people who were unavailable in one form or another, and someone who lived in another city was pretty unavailable. Still, I sent her love letters. In some alternate universe, I imagined that I might be in the same town at the same time…
But then I got cancer, which kind of threw me for a loop. It wasn’t even the glamorous kind that you get to brag about. I had testicular cancer, which you can’t talk about to strangers, because it’s too weird. I had a sense of humor about it. I used to joke that I gave my left nut to be a rock star, and I probably should have gotten it in writing before I made the deal. At one point a nurse asked me, “Are you a musician?”
I responded, “Can’t you tell? I have a pretty woman sticking a needle in my arm.” But in all honesty, I was pretty scared. Testicular cancer has a 90% survival rate, so if you’re gonna get cancer, it’s the one to get. Unfortunately, the 10% who don’t make it don’t catch it in time, and I was convinced that was me. I didn't exactly take the best care of myself.
It took two surgeries, and the second one was horribly invasive. I remember as I was waiting to undergo the surgery, the anesthesiologist was the identical twin of Glory. Of course, memories before you go under are terribly unreliable.
I had had my lymph nodes removed, to see if the cancer had spread. For three days I was on a morphine drip. They had stapled me back together, which tells me that they had to dig pretty deep to get to my lymph nodes. I was was still in pain when I moved back to my parents’ house from the hospital. It took a few more days before I wasn’t in constant pain. At that point, I just had to be careful not to make certain movements, or I would feel like I was being stabbed.
The physical pain wasn’t the only thing that was bothering me. I was waiting to find out if the cancer had spread, because that would require a whole other approach- chemotherapy. In addition to that worry, I had been told by the surgeon that there was a 1 in 3 chance that I might not be able to have kids. I didn’t have any prospects at the moment, but raising a family was on my to-do list.
As you might have guessed, the tests demonstrated that I did not have any cancer, and I have since fathered two children. While I would need to check in every six months, things were looking up. I called up my dream-girl to tell her the news. She wasn’t there, because she was a New Yorker, and cellphones weren’t yet worth the trouble. While I was waiting to hear back from her, I finished writing “Fairy Tales.” The whole song was about women getting a raw deal, and then the ending seemed obvious. I’ll make Glory, the heroine, who in the end writes her own happy ending. Of course, in real life Glory and I did not get together. I mean, we went on a few dates, but I was just in an altered state, and I was unable to make a move. I think I still needed to heal.
At any rate, fast forward about five years, and I’m touring across the country with my band, The Navigators. “Fairy Tales” is in the set, and I had crazy plans to record a double album, half of which would become Love and War, Vol. 1. All the songs I had written had been written in the past year. The band thought the plan was crazy. What about all my good songs that were staples in our set? But was it any crazier than trying to make a living as a touring musician? They were adamant that we add four songs: “Fairy Tales,” “Why”, “Standing on a Rock” and “When Your Ship Goes Down.” I have to give them credit, because three of those songs are the first three songs on Standing on a Rock.
However, “Fairy Tales” wasn’t ready. We tried several passes at it, and it just wouldn’t come together. We changed the tempo, we changed the chords. I think we left it, thinking that we might have gotten a decent take, but it’s not the take that we ended up releasing.
That came together at NuMedia. This was a year later, and just about everything that could go wrong for the band, did go wrong. Our label wasn’t interested in us anymore, we were dropped by our booking agent, and we were effectively defunct. But I began working with Bob Brockman at NuMedia. It seemed like we might be able to make a record. What I didn’t know was that the studio was about to shut down, and Bob was throwing up hail marys, which included us.
He was working on trying to create a series called Night Sessions, which would showcase artists performing live. I loved the idea, but I was working three jobs, and nothing ever got ready until around midnight, by which point I was exhausted. So we couldn’t use the tracks as live performances, because I sounded horrible. Plus, I missed the harmonies. Bob said that I should try re-recording my vocals. I did. And I did, but Night Sessions, never got off the ground, at least nothing we did made it.
Fast forward to 2020. I wanted to release a lot of the work I did with The Navigators 3.0- that’s what I called the version with Brian Griffin, Cuzin D and Naren Rauch. I had mixed Love and War, Vol. 1, and I wasn’t sure that I could do the songs justice. This was my attempt to see. While I am pleased with the results, I’m glad I had Andrew McKenna Lee mix the rest of the album, and it was easy to leave it off the album, because it wouldn’t have fit on the vinyl.
By the way, I’m aware that other songwriters have taken this same idea- the idea of taking fairy tales and giving them a modern twist, but I don’t think anyone had done it back in 1998, so if anyone wants to sue- bring it on!
Some day, I’m going to release a whole album called Fairy Tales, because I wrote some great songs. Of course, there’s a whole animated musical that would go along with it. Imagine my cancer story interwoven with an unrequited love story with talking animals. Except in the context of the story, the talking animals are signs that the person is delusional, because I guess I was. I believed in love at first sight, and I believed that I was going to be a star. The musical does not have a happy ending, but I still think people would love it, because a good musical just needs good music, and if you leave feeling wiser without instant gratification, that’s okay. That’s what being an adult is all about.