We only had room to print basic notes for every song inside the cover of our new CD, so I thought I would provide you with some more detailed liner notes here. These are according to my memory only, but I do have a mind like a steel vise so they should be fairly accurate. Still, I apologize in advance to my bandmates if I get anything wrong.

Inside the Wine
Track 1, written by Mario Pesacreta
listen here

When Mario first sang this song to us it sounded like it would end up being a jazz waltz, similar to “I Met Her on the Farm.” (Remember that one?) He came up with it while riding in the car at night. We first tried it out in his music store in Centralia, WA and when I began strumming, Ally, from behind the counter, said it sounded like Flamenco.

That was by accident. I then tried to make it sound Flamenco on purpose, even though I don’t know how to play real Flamenco. When Sam came in on drums there was no doubt that we were not playing Flamenco, but had invented yet another pseudo-style of rock. (Incidentally, it sometimes takes awhile to begin this song at live shows because we have to wait for Sammy to line up all his mallets and sticks in just the right way so that he can rapidly switch from clapping his hands to playing cymbal swells to regular rocking.)

The song exploded. We played it a bunch of times that night and Mario blew his chops having too much fun with his horn. We spent a lot of rehearsal time perfecting the hand-clapping intro and outro. It turned out to be a good addition to our live show. Sometimes people start clapping along, but they give up after awhile. It was also the hardest part to get right on the recording. I believe Sam ended up overdubbing all the clapping parts himself. His hands do sound the best after all.

We placed this song first on the album because of the unique intro and the great build-up. Tom had misgivings about putting it first because he thought it might scare people – but of course, we did it anyway.

When it came time to perform this song at an actual winery we realized we had better temporarily change the words from “happiness is not inside the wine” to “life is always better with some wine.”

- Franco