Being a rock and roll kid I didn't realize until much later that you could write songs based in historical times. Fantasy is well represented but actual history is almost nonexistent. Being a big Steve Earle fan and having been introduced to the Pogues by the woman I would eventually marry it was like a whole new world of possibility exploded upon my essential existence as a songwriter. The further back I went the more and more it felt absolutely right to base songs in a time period that decidedly ain't America from the 1950s on. It's such a miniscule sample size! This is my first stab at writing about a different century. They're all just cowboy songs anyway.