‘My Kind Of Girl’ sounds like a single to me. Do you think so?

Yeah. Joe was trying to make me go back and write a different chorus because that sounded too commercial. That song is seriously a great lyric and that chorus is the best chorus I’ve ever been involved with in writing, and that song is user-friendly. There’s just something about a song like that. When that chorus kicks in just about everybody wants to sing it - it sounds as good as vocal bands…

It’s interesting how this song took this little journey. When I wrote it I was thinking that it might be too heavy metal but by this time I learned that I should show it. So we start playing it and I’m plugged into the PD50 watt and Chad’s listening to it and he says, ‘we can do something with that.’ But what they did to it gave it a whole different thing - it wasn’t what I had originally intended. All of a sudden the song took on a different character and blossom when we all played it and then the lyrics came.

This song was really heavy man, like a truck, a stright-ahead rocker, and I don’t know how the melody came about.

The song ‘Get It Up’…

You know men have lost touch with their animal instincts because women have taught us to behave ourselves. So this song is about getting back in touch with your animal instincts. There’s actually weightier subject matter in that song. It’s not my favourite lyric on the album but it’s that good viby stuff. When Joe plays that chorus I just see thousands of festival people jumping up and down, getting positive, let’s do it… and the verses are about the anti-Christ… It’s really about not wallowing in the mud…

‘Learning To Fall’ has had quite a journey Joe…

Yeah. I started thinking about what was the one thing I hadn’t experienced solo in a concert. For some reason I thought of playing an acoustic guitar and looking at one person in the audience and sang them something. So I wrote this song and I think it was called ‘Open Your Heart To Love’ or something like that. It was kind of clumsy
but it was one of those things I was trying to cristalise a feeling. But it was pretty much the verses and choruses and at the time there was no bridge yet. So years later I play it to them to see if they would be into something like that. We had great moments as a band just playing it, even though it was troubling and I didn’t want it to be a power ballad. I was worried about being too pretty, too ’80s power pop. There were so many ways to do it. There were many versions so we decided to settle on an R&B ‘Try A Little Tenderness’vibe. But all the time we kept going back to the original demo which had such a feeling to it…

Does it feel strange in a way to form this band when you’re not in your twenties….

I think it feels so right. I’ll admit if it wasn’t for this band I would probably be retiring. I had nothing left to prove, I’m not looking for fame and fortune any more, that’s not my motivation. But all of a sudden I want that feeling of having a great band. I don’t think age has anything to do with it, you know, look at bands like the Stones who have been together all their lives. We’re a brand new band but we happen to be older. It’s like Clint Eastwood in his new movie, I feel like him. All those Dirty Harry one-liners he used were all rehearsals for his last movie. That’s the way I feel about the way I’m singing. I think that I mean it now. I was trying to be a rock star all my life, I was trying to make hit records, I was trying to be the greatest band in the world. I was trying to do everything that I’m doing now. This is so much more important to me now.

We’re doing this as friends and for the love of doing it. We have nothing to prove… Perhaps we should call the album, ‘Saving The Best For Last’?