The stories behind the songs:
#1 The Edge of America

The song “The Edge of America” came from a trip Melissa and I took with David and Judy McNaughton a few years back.  We were pretending to hunt for an island to live on.

We visited Folly Beach outside of Charleston.  When you enter the city, you are greeted with a sign that says:  Welcome to Folly Beach, the edge of America.

I was so taken with that concept – that on the coasts, you are on the edge of America – that I was writing the lyrics on the drive home, stopping the car to jot down lines.

Much of the song is based on actual sights and sounds of the trip:

Going we had driven on Highway 78 (which runs from Memphis to Charleston) and along the way we’d seen the first cotton fields I had seen in a long time.  Miles of white.

On Folly, at a restaurant there were these enormous photos from the 1940s of a previous hot spot called the High Top Bar and Grill.  It’s slogan was something like: “The place to meet your next true love.”

At a corner of the little town, I remembered hearing music blaring out over outside speakers.

And of course, there was a pier and folks were fishing.

The lyrics were pretty well set after a few more days of working on them.  But the melody took forever.

A friend I played music with hated the first version.  So, I set it aside.  Every now and then I would come back to it, but nothing seemed to jell.  I gave it to a friend, who is songwriter and producer, to see what melody he could come up with, and his was pretty good, but 1) I couldn’t play it, as I’m not that good of a guitar player and 2) Melissa didn’t like it.

So, it sat around for another year or so.

Then, it happened.  Really, sort of out of the blue, and as soon as I heard what I was doing in a minor key, I went, of course.

I stuck with this song longer than any others that didn’t work out because I loved the story in the lyrics, and they wouldn’t let me quit on them.

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