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about

I'd had the verse riff for a few years. I think I remember inventing it while laying on my back, loudly playing guitar at Camp Qwanoes in 1999 or so. I don't remember how the chorus came into existence, but I remember that I created the bass riff as a deliberate segue between the verse and chorus while I put together the drum machine track.

I recorded way too many guitars for this song. I think it has a total of 14 separate guitar tracks or so. The first riff is played on my dad's acoustic guitar that he never learned to play, which I amplified through a little Sears amp that I wish I never sold. I recorded that part upstairs at my parents' place in Central Saanich, BC. I didn't play any other acoustic guitars on the album.

Lyrically, this came out of listening to too many Lyle Lovett covers. I appreciate the way songs like "Memphis Midnight, Memphis Morning" can take a comparatively shallow relationship and make it into something bigger, better, and longer lasting. I don't think I succeeded here, but I appreciate the shallowness of the speaker. In the rock and roll context, I think the song works despite the speaker's dullness.

lyrics

I’d never shared much with strangers
There are things that I just need to know
Before I share my secrets

You are the only anomaly
With whom I shared my deepest needs
At our first meeting

I think we knew just what we were doing.

As strangers we met and as strangers we shared
Our passions, problems and improbable cares
And like those men in a tub or some lifeboats at sea
We used up our flares once the shore could be seen
And as strangers we loved, although we didn't know why
We felt like some shiny new husband and wife
We might’ve mimicked or admired in the movies.

Now, consider this: think about all the examples we’d seen
All the dark hotel rooms and and steamy shower scenes

Where, without fear or trembling,
They’d hold out ‘til the morning
Saying almost nothing.

We knew what we wanted,
We knew how we’d lose

As strangers we met and as strangers we shared
Our passions, problems, and improbable cares
And each word we spoke was as pure as gold
No baggage, memories, or language of old
And as strangers we loved well into the night
Like we were some recently eloped husband and wife
We might’ve seen, mimicked, admired or even cried for at the movies.

I sense that I’m a stranger
who’d just slipped into your home
And treated everything that you’d worked for
like it was worth little more than nothing at all
like it was Friday night and we’d settled for a foreign film
We never cared to see

I sense that I’m a stranger
Who just shared everything you didn’t care to hear

credits

from Once and Over Again, released September 22, 2007
Jeffrey Nordstrom: vocals, guitars, bass, drum programming.

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Jeffrey Nordstrom Vancouver, British Columbia

Singer-songwriter, teacher, photographer.

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