Three Deck Wreck celebrates Three Decades of Recording. The cover photographs were taken during a 2006 trip to Fraser Island in Queensland, Australia.
I took equal shares of the album’s content from four sources: my two preceding albums, earlier recordings and newer, previously unreleased songs. The newer and older material fell into place easily, but I struggled to choose only four songs each from Inappropriate Touching and Lean on the Angels.
1. Tiny Heroes
Small world, tiny heroes, tiny minds with big ideas. Same programme on every channel, same channel on every screen … more
2. Faded Heart Cafe
On the rocky road from me to you, about halfway between lust and found, sits the faded heart cafe … more
3. Leave Me Alone
I don’t want to feel the firm slap of your hand, the kiss of your kick, the warmth of your cigarette stubbed on my skin … more
4. Four Notes …
For piano, flute, bass and electric guitars; a variation on one of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words … more
5. Love You Live 2005
The note I scrawled in lipstick on the bedroom wall crawled down the stairs and died unnoticed in the hall … more
6. Howling at the Sun
Going back to the summer of seventy three, to a lambent evening on Rue Jolie. We were five up on a motorbike … more
7. You Took My Heart
You didn’t take the sun, you didn’t take the beauty of the moon. You didn’t take my life, though I wish you had … more
8. Mister Ryan
Choose your partners for the dance, mark your cards and take your chances. Mister Ryan took his chances with me … more
9. Spaceship Spirit
This gospel-sounding instrumental was commissioned by Television New Zealand as a soundtrack … more
10. Know Somebody
Went into the supermarket and some lady just scowled at me like I was a foreign lifeform, no-one she wanted to see … more
11. Faith is …
Faith is a strong woman with a mind of her own. When you go down next time, come up and show the world how you shine … more
12. Bones and …
Don’t like the clothes you wear or the way you do your hair. Don’t like anything you do, and honey, it’s not me – it’s you … more
13. Brokenhearted
But as you can see I smile through the tears I wear to help you bear the pain of walking out on a lover like me again … more
14. Low Ebb
I’m at a low ebb, there’s nothing more to say. No matter how I try to launch it there’s no water to float my boat away … more
15. Give us a Stone
You can keep “straight and narrow”; it was always more narrow than straight. There’s a wideness in mercy … more
16. Lost Forests …
Outside adult time, deaf to authority, a wide swathe of reserve thickly willowed. A magic place of secret springs … more
And an extra …
When a Man was written around the same time as Mister Ryan, but the CD didn’t have a slot for it.
When a man brings you heartache what I can’t understand
Is why you still love him, why you pretend
That everything’s alright, that everything’s fine.
And your life may go forward, but living’s left behind.
Now I have all these questions, but it’s answers I need.
I need you to tell me, to tell me why these things should be.
He gives you no warning when he comes and he goes
But expects you’ll be waiting whenever he shows
Now you may have answers to help me understand
Why you carry on hurting at the hands of the man.
When a man brings you heartache what I can’t understand
Is why you still love him, why you pretend.
Leigh is repaying karma from a previous life by working out this one in IT. She’s a project manager, developer, writer, musician … and a recovering soccer player.