Jackopierce Song Meanings & Explanations
"I Feel Like We're Given a Gift To Share."
- Jackopierce (2003)"
ADVENT
A - "I just remember taking 'ol' blue' which was our second vehicle, the old blue van. I don't know if you've heard of ol' blue. I drove it out to New Mexico, but I stopped off in Amarillo right at sunset. And I was sitting there at the Kentucky Fried Chicken sitting on the curb eating outside, because it was such a beautiful sunset. And I decided right then and there that I would live in Texas for the rest of my life. Shortly thereafter after I spent three glorious weeks in New Mexico in the mountains, I go out west to California and the girl I was dating calls me at the time and says 'you gotta come back home, I really want to see you,' and that started a whole slew of songs including this one." (12/13/1997).
B - "Anyone have that drawer full old letters from old girlfriends, or boyfriends, or photographs that your significant other prefer that you kind-of got rid of? But as you pack up to move out of your apartment into your first house you just somehow drag that box along and you peer at it time to time. I had a whole drawer full of that stuff and I think I emptied it out on this one. It's a true story--blue candle. It's called 'Advent' which means beginning or arrival." (12/06/2003).
AGAIN
"This is another song partially about my family. I was sitting in a bus headed from Back Bay Station to Fall River; and I was actually going down to Newport but I disguised this as Burgundy in this song. This song is actually on the new CD. I guess the whole key to the song is there's a line in it, 'gather 'round the Christmas tree the kids in 1970, take a snapshot now 'cause it'll never be this good again.' I'm sure some of y'all can relate to that maybe push the years up a few. It seems looking at pictures back then when everyone was together, everybody was happy and babies were beautiful. And now somehow families fall apart, and they reassemble, and they fall apart and then reassemble. I guess that's life. This is called 'Again'." (11/21/1997).
ANDERSON'S LUCK
The song was written in 93 or so and is based on the siege of sarajevo. I couldn't quite square the fact that people like us, at the end of the 20th century, were enduring another winter of ethnic cleansing while I, and the rest of the world,
sat on my couch and watched it all unfold on the news. so i tried to write a story of two people who lived in a city under siege, what may have happened to them there. might not have been a very strong story, cause nobody can seem to figure the thing out. (Email from Jack; thanks Sheedy and Riley).
ANESTHETIZED
ALONG FOR THE RIDE
A - "This song is about a good friend of mine who was dating a woman much older than himself, about fifteen years older. He thought he was being the young stud dating the older woman. She was taking him out and spending a lot of money on him, but it turned out that he was just one of many in her stable of stallions. That he was just along for the ride and that's what this song's called, 'Along For the Ride'." (Live from the Americas Album).
B - "Has anybody over here dated someone significantly older than themselves? A good buddy of mine called me, he was going to Georgetown University and he met some high-powered attorney--representing some high-powered artists, show, or something. Very highbrow. He was all excited this older woman taking him out and spending all kinds of money on him and stuff. I had been playing these chords over and over again, and I remember I was sitting in St. Louis at a friend of mine's house. My buddy called me up and told me this story and I immediately put the two together and that he was just along for the ride." (08/20/1997).
ANY OTHER DAY
A - "This next song is about getting together with old friends ... this is a song about being on the road for a while and wanting to come home and to be with people you haven't seen in a while." (03/31/1993).
B - "I think its TS Elliot that poem 'We shall not cease from exploration / in the end of all of our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the very first time.' That was a thing we had to learn ... that as freshman theatre majors. We had to learn that little poem. ... That song was basically written in front of people at a bar about the size of that corridor over there, a place that doesn't exist anymore. It's now a check cashing place and an Office Depot. But it was called Mimi's Pub. We used to play there every Tuesday night for like a year, for a buck at the door you could get in and see the rock show." (08/07/2001).
BACK NEXT YEAR
"I remember one time my dad and I, I was a little boy, talking a walk somewhere on The Cape. I asked him about these little walkways that were on top of these houses, little saltbox houses down there on the water. He said they're called 'widow's walks' because back in the old days men would go off to sea and sometimes be gone months, maybe even years, and sometimes they would never returned. Women could go up there and hope that their man was coming over the horizon. I guess it just inspired a story later on in life. I wrote this little song called 'Back Next Year'. (11/21/1997).
BE NICE TO ME
"The guy that produced this song his name is Morgan Freeman, and I haven't seen him in years. But he used to play in the band 'For Reasons Unknown', which some of you older folks know used to be like the hot band in Dallas years ago. We were playing at the Rhythm Room one night and he said 'Man, I love that song. I want to produce it.' So we went into the studio, and he played bass, and produced this song." (12/13/1997).
BE YOUR MAN
CAPABLE GIRL
A - "This song is about women. Ain't they all?" (Jack O'Neill - 03/21/1997).
B - "Don't be afraid to meet people; that's what this song is all about." (Jack O'Neill - 11/18/1997).
CIRCLE
"This is all about cycles; and most Native American tribes believe that everything goes around in a cycle. So even if you're in a bad way right now I'm sure things will turn around your way sooner or later." (03/31/1993).
COME ON JULY
COMING BACK
CRAZY
CRAZY THINGS
DRUGS MEAN WAR
EVERYTHING I'M NOT
"This is a song for thanking God that my wife is everything I'm not." (1/26/2008).
FINEST HOUR
"I do believe that this is our finest hour." (03/21/1997).
FORCES
"This song is about respect, it's called 'Forces'." (11/19/2005).
FREE
"This is a song about ... you know some think and say 'ball-and-chain' and 'my old lady', 'my old man'. I think when you find the right person you become more free than you were before. This is called 'Free'." (1/26/2008).
GET IT TOGETHER
A - "We wrote this song with Stan Lynch, he was the Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers drummer for about 25 years, and he's been a song writer for a long time. We got together with him and wrote this song. It's about getting your sh-- together, it's called 'Get It Together'." (6/20/1996).
B - "This next song is an anthem to not having your sh-- together. I don't think any given moment I have my sh-- together ... but it's called 'Get It Together'." (03/21/1997).
GET IT RIGHT
"This is about my beautiful wife ... it's called 'Getting It Right'." (10/07/2006).
GET TO KNOW ME BETTER
"This song I actually wrote while we were in Los Angeles back in 93 recording "Bringing on the Weather". I had the idea for it and I kind of finished it around the pool at the Oakwood Apartments, which are now rubble due to the '93 Earthquake. But I wrote this because I was kind of dating this girl and she was wanting to take it slow and take it easy and I was like 'man I'm on the road 200 days a year we need to get this going'. You know what I'm saying. We need to get this going on while I'm in town. 'Cause she was like 'I want to know you and trust you' and blah blah blah. I was like Get to know me better, quicker." (In-Studio Acoustic Compilation; 1999).
HEROES
HOLLOW
"I don't really explain this song ever, but I'll tell you that it's about a woman who--you know of the hit-n-run type affairs where they get you all fired up and get you into them and then they haul ass on you; mighty fact they leave you hanging". This is about trying to get back into the rhythm of things after she done come and f--ked everything up. It's called 'Hollow'." (Jack O'Neill - 03/31/1993).
HOW IT IS
I GOTTA KNOW
I'M NOT READY
"This is about that particular time in a relationship when someone says that they'd rather just be friends for awhile. That sounds really great to you, you're like yeah sure that's great I'll come over, I'll still sleep over I'll just stay on the couch you know. That sounds f--king great to me. I'd rather just hate you for a little while if you don't mind." (10/23/1997).
IRON JOHN
IS IT THE SUN?
"This next song is about living in Los Angeles, something we've done quite a bit lately." (07/22/1996).
IVY
JACOB
A - "I'm not exactly sure where this song came from . . . I guess it's a combination of growing up. This song is about staying together." (08/20/1997).
B - "This is a song about trying to keep families together, something that's not easy to do here in the United States. This is called Jacob." (11/14/2008).
LATE SHIFT
A - "This is a song about trying to keep up relationships on the road." (07/22/1996).
B - "It's one of my favorite tunes because I can remember we used to always drive back in the old days of the RV, we called it 'Old Big'. We called it 'Old Big' because our first van was 'Old Blue.' And then we had a red van and then we called it 'Big Red.' So we got the new twenty-seven foot Damon Escaper Class C recreational vehicle. We called it 'Old Big.' Jack used to take the late shift riding late at night." (12/06/2003).
LOVE IS LETTING GO OF FEAR
MARCH
A - "This is story about my family I guess. I was born about a month after my dad went to Vietnam. I don't know how my mom ever did it, and I don't know how my dad ever did it, and I hope that I don't ever have to do it. This is a song about learning lessons, it's called 'March'." (Live from the Americas Album).
B - "This is a song about soldiers." (Jack O'Neill - 03/31/1993).
C - "Actually this is a song we put on one of our first CDs ... but it was something we decided to put on the most recent release PROMISE OF SUMMER for reasons of ... I don't know. It's timely. It's kind of a story that keeps repeating itself and it's not a political song by any stretch of the imagination. This is a song about human relationships and time of difficulties, so. Originally I was thinking of my folks when I wrote it and now traveling around and seeing old friends and people my family who are deploying oversees have been involved with the military and uniform services for the past 8 or 9 years. We just thought maybe we'd honor them, I guess, with a re-recording of this song. So this is for everybody who wears a uniform." (Jack O'Neill - 12/03/2009).
MAY THE ROAD RISE TO MEET YOU
A - "When I was in high school I sang in this choir and every night we'd close with this song. And singing something I miss very much; 4-part harmony with 35 great singers . . . it's an old Irish prayer from the 1400s." (08/20/1997).
B - "We used to play at a little club called Mimi's Pub. Mimi's Pub is no longer, but we used to play there. I had some of my most fun nights of my entire life playing at Mimi's Pub. So much fun, and we used to close every night with this song and we'd go across the street to McDonalds and we'd rehearse our Rolling Stones interview." (12/13/1997).
MEXICAN TUNE/(RADIO TOWER)
"Back in the day we called this the 'Mexican Tune' because it centered around Tequila." (Jack O'Neill - 12/13/1997).
MORE THAN HE COULD GIVE
"There's just a few people in my high school, my friends that I was friends with that I really feel that they were taken away before their time. And this is in a way a vignette of people that I've lost I think before their time. It's called More Than He Could Give." (09/03/1996).
MORE THAN THIS
A - "This song was written in a particular time in my life when things aren't nearly as they are right now. I was pretty depressed, pretty sad. Feeling sorry for myself, I guess. Singing these words over and over again made me feel better. It was kind of therapeutic ... this is called 'More Than This'." (07/22/1996).
B - "This is Molly O'Neill's favorite song and she always asks me to play it, so we're going to play this one for Molly. I remember writing this song when I was living over on Dire Street--Dallas, Texas. Just sometimes when your writing a song you just latch on to something and you keeping singing it over and over and over again. You can't--, you can't really--, you can't leave it alone, it just keeps coming back to you and I kept singing these words over and over again: 'Should have been more than this' over and over again." (12/13/1997).
MY BABY
MY HEART
MY TIME
A - "This next song its about being on the road. It's kind of about being in beautiful places, beautiful times of the year and hooking up with beautiful and not worrying about what the next day will bring. This song is just a tribute to being on the road." (03/31/1993).
B - "Well, we love Texas. This is a song about Texas." (11/07/1997).
NOT AROUND
PLEASE COME TO BOSTON
"I met a girl whose friends with David Loggins, who wrote that song--friends with his daughter. She came up and said, 'David Loggins got to hear your version of Please Come to Boston and thought it was the best he'd ever heard.' I think after all that time of like pretending we hated that song and stuff, that's kind of some nice re-affirmation that it was alright to play after all these years." (11/18/1997).
PROMISE OF SUMMER
A - "We're going to play a couple songs from the new record, and one of them was kind of hatched in this backstage. When we last played we were working on this song and messing with it ... Jack lives in NY and I live in Dallas, TX, Jack lives in Manhattan ... and it's hard for us to get together and work on stuff ... This song 'Promise of Summer' bounced around our camp for a long time. We kept working on and messing with it, and even spent some time working on it in Kenilworth, IL up there up on the lake. We never thought we would have a new record out so we always had this promise of summer to kind of keep us going and we knew something good was coming around the corner and we'd be able to finish this record and do it. So this is called 'Promise of Summer' and it's set in a place, I lived in Georgia for 5 years when I was a kid and Savannah is a beautiful, beautiful place. This is kind of like "Vineyard" Part II, but set in Savannah, GA. It's called 'Promise of Summer'." (11/14/2008).
B - "When we finally came up with this song Jack and I, we only get to work like kind of spotty because Jack lives in New York, I live in Dallas. So we hookup play shows, and we'd be backstage and 'hey check this out" and we'd be like 15 minutes and then we'd gotta go play and then we're gone but this song really kind of helped us visualize that there was always a promise of summer. There's something around the corner ... we can finish this we're going to accomplish this. Anyway this is Promise of Summer; a fun new song to play for you guys. And I know for you guys here in the Northeast, I remember in Connecticut, I grew up in Westport, Connecticut. That little hint of warmth and air, come June, or whenever it comes. It's just so beautiful. I remember leaving High school leaving practice of some sort around 5 or 6 and and be like 'its not freezing cold'." (04/04/2009).
RAIN
RIVER
"This is a little song about all the people out in the audience right now talking shit about somebody else in the audience and they don't even know it." (Jack O'Neill - 11/07/1997).
SAD TONIGHT
SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME
"This is a very intimate song. This song really is about making love in the afternoon. Has anyone ever done that? I mean like in the springtime when it's not too warm you know, when the breeze comes through and you got a little bit of sweat on your body laying there in bed with someone you love. Everything is going perfect right, and she rolls over and says, 'say that you love me'." (03/21/1997).
SEPTEMBER
"Well this is a song for the whole family. This is about a woman who dances in a topless bar but then also moonlights as a hooker. She gets fed up with this lifestyle and being mistreated by men so she decides to kill a guy one night. It's really fun for the whole family so sing along . . . It's called September." (10/30/2001).
SIX PAGE LETTER
A - "This song started out about a scenario of pitying the rich . . . the rich girl, dad sends her off to a boarding school at an early age. She does everything bad in prep school and leads to her getting really drunk and going up to the top one of the main school buildings and lighting all of her classmates' final papers on fire while she sits there laughs and watches them burn. That's how the song started off and then it got really twisted and wacko but I guess overall its kind of pity the rich story. It's called Six Page Letter . . . it used to kind of mean something but it means many different things now. Just to give you an idea where it came from it just really started off about a little girl getting into lots of trouble and all she really wanted was attention but instead of attention she just kept throwing fits." (08/20/1997).
B - "I wrote this song about private school girls. Trouble people, trouble, trouble, trouble. And I looooove trouble." (11/23/2003).
SOMEDAY YOU'LL UNDERSTAND
SOMETHING GOOD
SWEET OCEAN
A - "This song is for all those Pisces and Aquarius out there in the audience. Because I'm a Pisces and I'm a little fishboy at heart and I like to be under the water as much as possible. And that's what this song is about; about being under the water." (03/31/1993).
B - "This song was inspired by Aqua Man." (08/31/2002).
TEXAS
THIS WOMAN
"Song about women. Aren't they all?" (Jack O'Neill - 03/21/1997).
THREE OF US IN A BOAT
A - "The first song that Jack and I wrote together, ever. Nine years ago. At first look it's pretty simple and corny. I was pretty proud of the lyrics actually because I made my first literary allusion to a book that I didn't even finish. It's a book called The Boat Who Wouldn't Float by a guy named Farley Mowat. He's an Alaskan comedic author. The book wasn't all that good but I really enjoyed the title. So I ripped it off and threw it in this song. So, most of you had no idea who Farley Moat was. This is a song called Three of us in a Boat." (08/20/1997).
B - "So I'll tell you the real story. You see I grew up in Connecticut but got to Texas as quick as I could . . . I was about 17 or 18 years old in high school in Connecticut and I met this girl. She's so beautiful and I totally fell in love with her . . . I was diggin' her vibe and she'd be diggin' my vibe. And I went off to college right? I went to SMU. I met this girl, like I said, and when I went off I thought 'okay I'll never see her again no big deal.' Of all the schools in the United States to pick and we come from the tiny state of Connecticut, where does she wind up? That's right Southern Methodist University. I see her freshman year at orientation and 'like oh my god, it's meant to be' and totally fell in love with her on the spot. We started dating and doing our thing and it turns out that she has a boyfriend in St. Louis named Blain. To tell you the honest truth when I wrote this song the original lyrics where so pathetic, because her name was Ray, so it used to be 'I miss my Ray of sunshine' but I changed it because that was pathetic." (10/30/2001).
C - "This is the first song that we wrote in 1988. It's about this girl that we were both dating unbenounced to the other." (10/23/1997).
D - "This song is about a young girl I met at SMU and I was so in love with her she broke my heart because of her damn frickin' boyfriend." (11/23/2003).
E - "I wrote this, I think I was 19 years old. The truth of the matter was that I was dating this girl at Southern Methodist University; she was a Kappa Kappa Gamma of which I was a "House Boy" for 2 years. Smartest move I ever made---3 free meals a day, I got invited to every formal under the sun, I was the default date for everything. It was a bunch of theatre majors working there in the kitchen. So I fell in love with this girl but the only problem was that she had a boyfriend as you probably well know and he was a fraternity brother of mine--actually a pledge brother--which really wasn't cool of me because I really didn't know the details. It was kind of a very hazey, fuzzy time. Anyway, so I wrote this song about her." (2/24/2006).
TRAIN
TRIALS
A - "This is a kind of dark, sordid, sardonic love song. It's called 'Trials'." (07/22/1996).
B - "I sure do like the way you Texas women talk. You say things like 'hi baby, what can I do for you baby, how are you baby, good to see you.' You know what I liked it so much that I wrote a whole song about it. This song is called 'Trials'." (11/23/2003).
VALENCIA
A - "This song . . . was inspired by a book I read called Dreaming in Cuban by Christina Garcia. It was a really confusing book to me. You know how certain things you really don't understand but really catch a vibe from it ... 'okay I didn't really understand what was going on but I kind-of enjoyed reading it nonetheless'. This inspired this song about this woman I call Rosa and she's crazy. She lives on the streets. She's homeless. Everybody kind-of knows that she's crazy but in her mind she's totally lucid and thinks that lives in Valencia, Spain. But in fact she lives on the streets in DC. and to us her life isn't great but in her mind her life is beautiful and so since she thinks its beautiful I guess it must be beautiful. This is called Valencia." (08/20/1997).
B - "Well this is a song its from the new CD. It's about a place I've never been to, but I've been to in my dreams. So it's called Valencia." (11/07/1997).
VINEYARD
A - "I grew up 3,000 miles away from here on the other coast ... I grew up on the ocean as well. There is a beautiful little island off the coast of Massachusetts. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. I think I became a man on Martha's Vineyard." (07/22/1996).
B - "Brought me so much joy and so much pain, but out of pain comes good songs sometimes ... All the way home to New England I found a little island that brought me much respite and solace." (12/06/2003).
WEATHER
WILDFLOWER
A - "All the paint on this guitar is gone right here, because of the ring I used to wear--and when I'd whack it like that like we're about to do." (Jack O'Neill - 12/13/1997).
B - "One of my favorite parts about living in Texas is the springtime and things on the side of the road we call Bluebonnets, or Indian Paintbrush, or Evening Primrose. People pull over all the time right at sunsent and they park their cars right on the side of the road and risk their family's entire life to get them out of the carseats and drag them out into the tall grass. They take pictures for photos for Christmas and all, deep in the Wildflowers." (11/04/2005).
WILL NOT BRING US TOGETHER
A - "Money can buy you alot of things, but it can never buy you love." (03/31/1993).
B - "I used to date this girl from Chattanooga--never really liked her much but she bought me a whole bunch of cool sh-- though." (11/01/1997).
C - "This song is one of the quirkiest, silliest, tunes I've ever written about a ah---. I was just sitting in my room one day--I had this little garage apartment over in University Park, on a little street called Haney and it was one of my greatest memories of living there. Two years I lived there and the people that owned the house they had little kids and everyday I came home from school and the kids would be so excited to see me and they'd be like 'Cary' and they'd jump all over me and sh--. I loved it so much. I was just thinking about that, just another memory to chuckle. But, I remember sitting in my room looking around and I just broken up with this girl and I realized almost everything in my entire apartment she or her mom had purchased for me, so I felt like I needed to take a big trip to the Goodwill after I wrote this song. She's a sweet girl though." (12/13/1997).
WITCH IN THE OLD MAN
WOMAN AS SALVATION
"This next one is about ... imagine you can put your faith into institutions or politics or whatever you have; or you can find yourself a wonderful woman, man, being or whatever and that's all you need. So this one's called 'Woman As Salvation'." (Jack O'Neill - 03/31/1993).
WORLD'S GREATEST
If you have any more quotes for the songs listed here, please email me!