The Man Who Loved The Whore

November 13, 1996

One of my favorite songs, about the "fallen" woman who came to wash Jesus' feet with her tears. Some say it was Mary Magdalene, others say, not so. In any case, writing this song was a real experience, almost as if she described the scene to me herself...


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Tell Me

August 8, '96

How do you get someone to tell you what's up with them?


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Just Give Me A Chance

Between December '95 and March '96

All except for the chorus of the song were parts of a message someone had received from the Lord for a boy who had been driving a car that was involved in a fatal accident while he was still in a coma, but which also appealed a lot to me. It was an unconditional and endless love that I wanted to pass on to others, if they would just give Him the chance...



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Changes



Jan./Feb. '96

Another Prodigal son type of song with traceable Cat Stevens influences


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Crimson Leaves (Sarajevo Rain)

Feb.3rd, 1996

Anti-War ballad from "Whispers"

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Indifference

Jan.12, 1996

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Whenever I played that song live I introduced it as a song about a rampant social disease that's especially wide-spread in the part of the world we're living in. You just don't get rich and famous with that sort of stuff...


Freak Like Me

November '95


3 minute version of the story of my life up until that point...

The nostalgia of looking back at the days when I was still free to roam about like a gypsy, compared to the settled down life-style I saw myself stuck in... But there are always some lessons to learn from all of it...


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Eye Of The Storm

October 12, 1995

I was playing in lots of Irish Pubs during this time.

The fiddle on this one was played by Maire Egan, the girl-friend of one of the Pub owners in Constance at that time...

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Battle At Dawn

August 20, 1995

A song about the Great Tribulation & the Antichrist, the 2nd Coming of Jesus & the Battle of Armageddon.



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Things You Hate

Aug.15, '95

One of the hits from "Rhythm of Life" about how some people complain no matter how much they've got...


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This Kid

July '95

Song for my son Benjamin. He was such a cute and cheery fellow at age 3...

You couldn't help but be changed.



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Wandering Through The Desert


April through July 4, '95

Similar to the previous one, a song in which I admit that I've been getting off the straight & narrow & recognizing the need to find my way back home...

A parallel between my own life and that of the people of Israel wandering through the desert for 40 years after having arrived at the Promised Land and not having the guts to invade it...


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Drifting Around

Constance, June 13, '95

In the 80s movie "Made In Heaven" at one point, this guy who plays an angel angel tells his charge on earth that he's not making any progress, just sort of drifting along... I knew that applied to me for the previous couple of years in my life, & this is one of my "prodigal returning home"announcements.


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Would You Be Listening

Ravensburg, June 3, '95

There are so many things we would sometimes like to tell people that could really help them, if they would only be interested enough to listen...


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I've Got You (& You're All I Need)

Winter of '94/'95


One of my personal faves from "Whispers," a love-song to Jesus.


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Welcome to the Rhythm

Between Dec.3, '94 and March 1, '95

On December 3rd, 1994, our daughter Julie-Ann was born.

I actually wrote the first half of this song in the hospital while we were waiting for her arrival.

After 3 boys in a row, she was a nice surprise.


Title song of the '97 album, "Rhythm of Life"

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Judas

Jan.15, 1995

Funny we know so little about Judas when there seem to be so many people like him.

I guess we've all felt betrayed at one time or another, and may, at the same time, also have sometimes let others down, too.

History repeats itself.



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Thief In The Night



Dec.21, 1994

Once I got up in the middle of the night (or wee hours of the morning), compelled to write down this song...

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Birds Fly South

Nov.23-Dec.9, 1994

Folk-Song that came to me before some gig out in some fields under an eerie autumn sky around the Stuttgart area.

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The Devil Hates Me For That

Written at Ted's place near Stuttgart, Nov.18, 1994

A song I played live quite often during that time. Guess it's a typical "Mendoza lick"...

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You Shed Light Into My Heart (Thanks To You )

Nov.6-13, 1994

Song I wrote for the couple who had won me to the Lord about 18 years earlier...

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Gently & Quietly I’ll Blow Your Mind

Oct.29, 1994

Although I may not have been in the brightest phase of my life during the time I wrote this song, I always figured it was the Lord speaking in it, since He definitely manages to blow our minds with His whispers, more than all the world's rah-rah ever could.

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Love, Come Into My Life



Oct.29, 1994

I think I've had the knack for oriental slants in some of my songs for a while, & this was one of them...

If you think about it, the sort of music Jesus listened to during His time on earth was probably a lot more oriental than what we're used to...

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Silver & Steel

Oct.14, '94

Folkie love tune, not for anyone special that I know of.
This series of songs was recorded at Ted's place for a tape (later CD) we called "Gently & Quietly I'll Blow Your Mind" a sort of "unplugged" album.

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Shadows


October 5, 1994

Folky tune about the Tribulation & 2nd Coming/Rapture, which I still play relatively often, since I like its style and it's easy on the voice, being so low-pitched & smooth.

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The Year Love Disappeared

March-August 1994

David Brandt Berg once wrote that the last thing they're trying to kill people's faith in is love. Jesus also said that in the last days the love of many would grow cold...


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Life's Not a Freeway

August 19, 1994

There's no speed limit on German highways, & people drive accordingly. It can really be murderously dangerous sometimes. This song is for all the "me-first" types on German highways.

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Passion

July '94

There isn't much of a story to tell behind this song, except that it was basically addressing the colder than average, reserved German mentality in general... no offense intended.

It's a song that every now and then I find preaching at myself...

Love-Starved Children

March 10, 1994

This song was inspired by one of the kids in our neighborhood who struck me as pretty forsaken, since her parents apparently never had time to her, so she often would tug along with us when we'd go for a walk through the woods or whatever...

Coincidentally, this song brought me to the States in 2000, via the North America Country Music Association Intl., since the song had won some kind of award the year beforehand, and I was invited to attend the following year, but that is yet another story...


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Kisses of the Past


March 4-5, 1994

Having to deal with nostalgia over the "good old days" a bit, I came up with this song, reminded of the counsel from a good friend who compared the past to "water under the bridge..."

Angels


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Song which originally functioned as title song for a technically flawed tape I recorded at the bass player's home in Bavaria who was playing with Cesar & GoWest at that time, and was later re-recorded for Rhythm of Life...

Lone Song

A song for Ted, when he had been deserted by his girl-friend whom he loved very much... Sigh!

Life's Roller Coaster Ride

Sept.13-14, 1993

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The song that kind of wraps up my life in a 2 minute version of the story...

Closer Than a Friend

Sept.3, '93

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Folk-Rock ballad I apparently wrote 5 years before I got around to recording it...

Life's Like a River

Dec.'92-April 20, '93

One of my more inspired attempts at a Country-Folk song.
Around this time I was bidding farewell to busking and playing more and more regular gigs...

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Where Grey Skies Won't Go

November 24, 1992

One day I got a phone call from Cesar Galehr in Austria, telling me he'd heard my tape "One Moment in Heaven" and that he needed a rhythm guitarist for his Country band.
Our first gig in Switzerland was a disaster, but I wound up playing with "Cesar & Go West" for 15 years.
On that first gig I happened to meet 2 girls from Stuttgart, gave them a tape and consequently met Ted Richley, another Christian Country musician, who not only recorded my 2 subsequent albums, but also got me into the Stuttgart Country scene and later on donated a P.A. to our cause (parts of which I'm still using.)

This song was one of my early attempts to write a Country song, although my love for Country didn't turn out to be a lasting affair, largely due to the development of the Country scene...

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Concrete Hearts

Sept.7-22, 1992

Inspired by a fairly cold conversation with an English lady I met one night busking in a pub in Constance...

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The Busker's Song

July '91 - August 19, '92

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In those days I still supported our entire family of 6 by busking in restaurants & clubs, primarily in Switzerland.

It wasn't always easy, as this song, sort of similarly to my sentiments in "My Melody" expresses...

Soul Rain

July 9-10, 1992

One scene I particularly like in the movie "The Holiday" is the one in which Jude Law's character confesses to his date that he's a "weeper."

"A movie... a book... anything... I weep."

Well, I can sort of relate to that, and that's what this song is about.

It's sort of a taboo in our society for fellas to "weep," but it's not the only thing that's screwed up about our society...


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Free

22/6/92

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Came up with this riff one day & the melody floated into my head, accompanied by memories of the past... Retrospectively, I can see now that this song may have come as a reminder of something precious that it sometimes pays to fight for in order to keep it...

Welcome to Babylon

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Back in those days, there used to be a graffiti on a bridge when you came into Zürich from the Highway that said, "Welcome to Babylon!" & I always thought that would make a good title for a song.
So one day I just sat down & did it...

Fire, Water, Air & Earth

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One of the roadblocks to inter human communications and peace is the fact that we tend to see things from our own point of view and generally don't come up with a lot of tolerance for whatever is different from us. This was only one stretch in my journey towards the realization that God has purposely created us as different kinds in order to both learn from each other and learn to accept each other...

Wisdom

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By the time this song was written, our son Benjamin was born, and we had moved from the farm in Switzerland across the border to Germany.

The song is about the Holy Spirit, which some people believe to be of feminine nature, which would only make sense to me...