It all started when I was talking to Alicia McGovern about which songs I should enter this year in the Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest at the Sisters Folk Festival. Not only is Alicia a fantastic songwriter, but she won the whole durned contest last year. And her perspective was interesting: she suggested some songs I never would have thought of entering, including one that I never even play. That song, If I’d Known, is the first song on my newer CD; it got a lot of radio airplay which I assumed was because it was the first track, so if people wanted to play something from the CD that’s the most likely place to start. But I don’t think I’ve played it live since the CD release show. I then mentioned this conversation, and my surprise that she’d think of such a song, to Vance Gilbert, when we met up for a vocal coaching session. He asked to hear the song, which I struggled through (having not played it in two years). He loved some of the lyrics though pointed out (as we got there) that he would hate the bridge -- it has a really cliché line in it, among other things. So we got to thinking about how to arrange the song so it would be worth playing, which included chopping off the offending part of the bridge (which was problematic not only because it was a cliché, but because it did the thing Vance gets on my case about – trying too explicitly to teach a lesson) and substituting the melody of the excised part for the part that remained. And then just did a little more thinking about what to do with the instrumentation of the song. And suddenly I like it too! And I especially like the fact that it’s a less heavy song than a lot of the songs I’m known for. My best songs pretty much all deal with issues – they’re important topics, and I think the songs address them well (and poetically) and that’s what’s great about the songs, but too many of them in a row can get a bit overwhelming. So it’s good to have something that’s upbeat and non-political (the song does have a broader point; it’s just a less intense one than in some of my other songs) to put into my set, and fun to reclaim a song I had basically given up on. After that I made a comment about the one song from that CD (The Friends that I Need) that I’ve never even performed live, so Vance, of course, wanted to hear that one. And proposed some serious surgery (cutting out nearly half the song) to make it much less wordy but retain the concept. I’m fiddling around with that – it’s not clear that the song survives with quite that much removed, but I’m seeing if maybe the same principles applied more judiciously could resurrect it. So if you come to a live show in the next couple months, you might hear a new old song.