Picking Up The Pieces - Track by Track
Track By Track for Picking Up
The Pieces
“Love
Used To Be,” by Jewel Murray. "A potent
depiction of an emotional state following the decision to divorce. “I’m very
proud of this lyric. It’s completely non-commercial, six minutes long and
doesn’t have a traditional structure, but I think lyrically, if somebody was to
look back on who I am or what I am as a writer and lyricist, this is a good
example. It’s a song that you have to listen to several times and it’s a
gut-wrenchingly honest take of where I was at in my life when I wrote it.”
“A Boy
Needs A Bike,” by Jewel Murray. “I’ve often written from a male’s perspective
both in my songs and in my short-story fiction. I liked the idea of a young boy
not being able to understand the tension in the household and identifying with
his dad and wondering if women are crazy, and the way his dad handles that
relationship and the nuance of it. And
the son enjoying a bicycle and the release of it and the way his dad enjoys
going in his car to sort of meditate. But the boy is too young to understand. I
love the limitation of a child not being able to get the full picture but still
get the idea.”
“Everything
Breaks,” by Jewel Murray. “I wrote this song about 20 years ago. But
doing it now and recording it now, I didn’t get through it without sobbing on
every single take. This song has more relevance now than it did when I wrote
it.
“Family
Tree” by Jewel Murray and Lisa Carver. “In addition to the
autobiographical lyrics, this is really about the obligation we have as
children to examine where we come from and where we want to be. It's directly conveyed in the bridge line that
says, ‘Take the fruit but choose the seeds I scatter in the wind / That’s the
job of the kid to do better than our parents did.’ No matter whose childhood it
is – even the best of childhoods – there are traits we might want to weed out
and traits that we really want to continue. And to try and do that thoughtfully
I think leads to a more fulfilled life.”
“It
Doesn’t Hurt Right Now,” by Jewel Murray and Rodney Crowell. “I’ve been
a big fan of Rodney’s and we finally got together to write. He came up with
that first verse and we liked the idea of this being a mini-play. It’s very
theatrical - with a storyline that conveys the aftermath of a woman's affair on
a broken relationship devoid of communication. It’s also about the complexities
of love and the willingness, courage and ability to engage yourself in it fully
or not. I think it’s difficult to do a male-female duet. It’s hard to strike
the right note that isn’t just sort of saccharine. But Rodney’s a very deep and
thoughtful writer and very interested in truth, so I loved that this wasn’t a
typical duet.”
“His
Pleasure Is My Pain,” by Jewel Murray. “I wrote this quite a while
ago, when I was probably 18. I’ve always liked this song but never found the
right place for it. I recorded it acoustic at my home studio and then I had a
friend add all those evocative strings to it. This added such a rich texture
and ambience to it. It’s a very long song with no chorus. Producing that type
of song can be difficult, but hopefully the storytelling is intriguing enough
that people keep listening.”
“Here When
Gone,” by Jewel Murray. “This song was never completed until a couple
years ago. I was never happy with it. And even then I wasn’t sure until I got
in the studio and figured out this dramatically improved arrangement. Thanks to the chemistry between these
musicians and I, this song has finally found its place. The poetry and lyric is
very unique to my style of writing. I don't recall hearing anything quite like
it before, as it transitions from a sort of haunting groove to a shuffle swing.
“The
Shape Of You,” by Jewel Murray, Dallas Davidson and David Lee. “I wrote
this for a friend of mine that passed away of cancer. I’d written another song
for her called “Violet Eyes,” shortly after she died, and this revisits my
feelings 15 years later. Losing someone you love very dearly is so painful; you
just wish the pain would go away. But after time I started to see that pain as
a little treasure because it was something that reminded me of her. I was
driving down the road and had this idea that I had a hole in my heart that is
in the shape of you. There’s a beauty to mourning and missing somebody and
holding them in your heart. It’s sort of like a little window into heaven you
can see them through.”
“Plain
Jane,” by Jewel Murray. “I wrote this after being in New York for a
week and being around some socialites. It’s
about women – and I include myself, certainly – feeling this need to hide
behind something because we don’t feel good enough exactly how we are. We have
to somehow be prettier or smarter or dress better to be lovable. It’s really a
song about self-acceptance and learning to love yourself and that ‘Plain Jane’
is beautiful.”
“Pretty
Faced Fool,” by Kip Moore, Brett James and Dan Couch.” “My friend
Kip Moore wrote this and he’s a really dear friend and a really great talent.
He’s been with me through a lot of what I’ve been going through. He played me
this song and I really loved it. As much
as I’m a really big fan of songwriters, I don’t find many songs that I feel
sound like me, but this song really resonated.”
“Nicotine
Love,” by Jewel Murray. “I wrote this a really long time ago, predating my first album by a couple of years.
Way before I was homeless. I was probably 18 and had just graduated high
school. It’s an extremely dark song about a woman who had been sexually abused
as a child. She turns to prostitution
and ends up getting off on killing men and controlling them. I look back at a
lot of the songs I wrote at that time and none of them are love songs. They’re
very complex and grown-up. Thanks to
Jonathan Yudkin's wonderfully adventurous string arrangements, this is now
exponentially darker than any solo acoustic performance of it. I still find it remarkable that I wrote this
song at such a young age.
“Carnivore,”
by Jewel Murray. “I’d forgotten I’d changed the bridge over
time into this low, mellow little-red-riding hook spooky bridge and I didn’t
realize there was ever another bridge over time. My fans on Twitter reminded me
to go back to the original bridge on “it. I was sent a bootleg of it and now it’s more
dynamic. My fans speak up a lot. They really wanted “Carnivore” on the album.”
“My Father’s Daughter,” by Jewel Murray
and Lisa Carver. “This song
is very personal and very autobiographical. I thought it worked well to have
Dolly Parton on it. It’s kind of difficult on that personal of a song to have
somebody on it, but Dolly was definitely the perfect choice because our lives
are similar in several ways. It’s a song I wrote in 2008 - seven years ago, and
whenever I sing it live people always cry. I was always surprised because it’s
such a personal song about my life and my story, but I definitely realized as I
sang it that people relate their own lives to it. Dolly said it reminded her of
“Coat of Many Colors” and some of her autobiographical songs, which was very
flattering.”
“Mercy,”
by Jewel Murray. “This is the newest song on the album. I wrote
it for myself. I was in a lot of pain when I wrote it. It really touches me
when I sing it. It reminds me a little bit of “Hands” just in its message:
yielding and giving instead of being more brittle and fighting and armored.
I’ve been playing it live recently and it seems to be bringing a lot of comfort
to people. People often cry when I sing it. It's always nice when you create
something for yourself that you really needed to hear and it seems to be
something other people needed to hear as well.”
Pre-Order the album HERE