My Music

Katrina was written on or about September 7th, 2005 at my house in Long Beach, MS.  Over the next three weeks I was running the harbor surveys for the Bay St. Louis bridge, the Biloxi Bay bridge, Pass Christian harbor, Long Beach harbor, Gulfport harbor, and Point Cadet Marina in Biloxi.  This song was written from the inside looking out.  I didn't record it until about 5 or 6 months later.  It was a little hard to deal with right at first.  This song is dedicated to those who were here and to many who are gone.

The lyrics for Joe Black were originally written in 1999 but I didn't add the music until about 2001. The story behind Joe Black: I was working on the island of Curacao in 1998 (yeah, I know, tough life) and, in the course of running around the island I kept seeing signs displaying a penguin with a bow tie. The only text on the signs was Joe Black in large letters. I was pretty sure the island wasn't inhabited by Linux fanatics so I finally asked one of the cab drivers what Joe Black was. She said it was a local, privately owned lottery. She then told me that many of the islands inhabitants would work really hard to make some money and then they'd go and buy bunches of lottery tickets from Joe Black in the (usually) vain hope that they would strike it rich.  She said they were all "working for Joe Black".  Of course the lightbulb immediately went on over my head. I have to say, if you really need to write some lyrics, sitting on the beach at night at the Marriot in Curacao with a glass of wine is a pretty damn fine place to do it ;-)