Dewey Kincade

In the UK, the government is addressing the scourge of loneliness head-on with several initiatives. Loneliness shortens lives by making them less fun, so it makes sense that the government might step in. It’s odd that we might experience a loneliness epidemic given that there are more people on the planet than ever before, and we are all hyper-connected to one another. You’d think we’d have the opposite problem: a lack of privacy epidemic. But of course, our screens don’t bring us closer together.

But even…

I don’t like violence. I don’t encounter it very often in my life, though as a teacher I have been called upon to break up a fight. But I don’t like to watch it. I can. I have. It’s not the blood and guts that I find repulsive. It’s not the cold-blooded killing, but the hot-blooded killing that scares me the most. Watching anger in one person’s face, and the pain in another person’s face is hard for me to handle. I hope I never have to witness that in person. I don’t understand that feeling- the feeling of…

This song is all about the cycles and rhythms of life. Being a parent, working full-time, and that’s just life without the play-dates, after-school activities, special events, the meetings, the family functions, etc. I was hyper-aware of the movement of time, because it wasn’t until the end of the day that I could sit down in the basement and create in my studio. I was producing records for other people, and when I played the co-producer the music that I was working on, he said I sounded tired, which, of…

The saga all begins with this song, or just the opening riff of the song. I was in New York City, gearing up to move to Louisville. My daughter was a little over a month old at this point. My wife and I had spent the past week putting all our belongings into boxes. Needless to say, this was a stressful time in my life. As I was running around trying to shut the door on an era of my life, I kept hearing that riff in my head over and over. It was blaring on like the soundtrack to something.

At another time, I…

I got to the airport, and I got on the plane back to New York. I don’t know how. It’s odd that I don’t remember that. I suppose a therapist might say that I blocked it out. It doesn’t feel good to be the one that breaks someone’s heart. It doesn’t feel good to take something like a relationship that has the potential to be, well, anything, and to kill it off. And I couldn’t even tell anyone about it.

I mean, people knew. My friends knew that I was in a relationship that had an expiration date on it. I had…

I was staying at my friend Wes’ apartment in Hell’s Kitchen when I wrote “I See You Clearly.” It was prompted by a conversation that I had had only a few days before with Genevieve, the woman I had recently broken up with. She had said that she felt like I didn’t see her, which I found a strange thing to say given that we had lived together for several years.  I knew that she hadn’t meant it literally, but it seemed like one of those creative spins on a problem that left me with no means of addressing it…

While this is not the last song on the album, this is the last song that I wrote on the album.  I hadn’t written any songs for a couple of months. I wouldn’t write another song for another couple of months. It’s not that it was a dry period for me. The band was doing well. We were starting to get out of town and playing Boston regularly. We were combing through my catalog, looking for songs to play.

One day, I heard that the guy my ex had left me for had stumbled onto a late-night train, and because he was…

In the midst of a tumultuous year, there were a few moments when the world seemed positively friendly. I reconnected with a college friend one night. For an evening we talked about the past, the world, the future, but I don’t think I spent a lot of time thinking about my break-up, and it made an impact on me. I went home and started to write the song, but the opening lines leave a lot to live up to.

Thank you for tonight

I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life

I mean, where do you go from there…

Photo: Andrew Dailinger

I was on a road trip with my family, and we were listening to the new album. I wanted feedback on what the single should be because I had no idea. I was surprised when my wife picked “Everybody Wants a Piece of You.” For one thing, it’s a ballad. I’d been told that you don’t lead with a ballad because it doesn’t generate excitement. I’m starting to question that notion, though.

After a few weeks of seeing what people organically flock to, it seems that my wife may have had it right in…

Yeah, so there’s a moment after the devastation when the immediate sting subsides. There’s a kind of clarity where you can see beyond the pain, and you realize that the end is not in sight. If fact, the end is very far away indeed, but you know that there is an end, and that’s not nothing. That’s where I was when I wrote this.

Emotions don’t come easy to me, and I never saw music as a good place for autobiography. This album is a bit of an exception in that regard, but this song really highlights that…