“Anchors Aweigh” was the fourth song written specifically for the MEMOIRS OF A MANWHORE: THE REELING WALTZ OF A DRUNKEN LOTHARIO album. (It also became the first single... and we ARE still planning to shoot a video for it sometime this winter!) A piano ballad in waltz time, we knew it basically flew in the face of everything on the radio at the time (and still) but felt right at home next to artists such as Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Ben Folds, Elton John, Rufus Wainwright, or

I had long had the title for the MEMOIRS OF A MANWHORE: THE REELING WALTZ OF A DRUNKEN LOTHARIO before it even occurred to me to have a title track. In fact, my good friend and fellow vocalist/songwriter John DePalma urged me NOT to have a title track because he didn’t think it would be feasible to write a song called “Memoirs of a Manwhore.” But some couplet in Paul Simon’s “Think Too Much” (from his oft-overlooked Hearts and Bones album) inspired the line “My childhood was

So there are three ballads that sort of separate the distinct sounds of the uptempo songs on the MEMOIRS OF A MANWHORE: THE REELING WALTZ OF A DRUNKEN LOTHARIO album. “Hotel by the River” is the first: it’s the standard pop/country love ballad, powerful in its way and relatable to ordinary scenarios in ordinary lives. Then there’s the epic ballad of “For Delilah, Forgiveness.” Like “Hotel,” “Delilah” is steeped in Biblical allusion. In this instance, the storyline is that of

I first wrote “Jump Into the River” back in 1999 or 2000 or 2001 -- I honestly can’t recall which year, although I’m fairly certain it was in the early autumn, and I know it was for a songwriting contest with the theme “the river.” “Hotel By The River” was the pensive, thoughtful piece; “Jump into the River” was the caustically humorous fraternal twin borne of that labor. I’ve always been proud of the fact that this is the only song I know to use the word “obsequious,” and I’

“Car in the Rain” is about what Tears for Fears’s Curtis Smith referred to in “Break It Down Again” as “the beauty of decay.” This song is a vignette about two strangers in a car in a parking lot who find comfort in one another’s arms as they watch the rain fall on abandoned factories in a dying town. Structurally, the verses of the song were shaped by the chord progressions Joni Mitchell was using throughout her Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter period -- hence, I’ve i

“Sad Sack” is the third song in what I sometimes refer to as the “Detroit Airport Trilogy.” I wrote this song (along with “Three Rings” and “Happy to Be Your Whore”) while stuck in the Detroit airport — the OLD terminal — for a very long day. These three songs served as the springboard from which the entire MEMOIRS album developed (even though five songs were pulled from my back catalogue to fill the album), with both “Anchors Aweigh” and “Delilah” emerging within a few days

I originally wrote “Free Fall” all the way back in 1993 and recorded a four-track demo that featured Adam Fitting harmonizing with me on backing vocals (which were recorded at half speed to sound all “chipmunky” when played at regular speed). Although I loved the song and played it frequently at the piano, I never had a proper project for it until Adam Silverstein and I began recording for the MEMOIRS album, where we found it fit the sonic palette quite nicely. The song alway