#1.  ABERDEEN:  This one was swimming around in my head for months.  I couldn’t get rid of it.  Finally, I decided to demo/record it just to get it out of my system.  I played the finger-picked guitar part to a click track and then overdubbed the mandolin and vocals; I figured that was it.  It didn’t seem like a full band song, and I didn’t intend to use it for anything.  When the guys heard it they liked it and it was John who said, “This should be the opening track.”  Well, we actually went and re-recorded it with drums and bass but it is the original demo that appears on Three Nights – as the opening track!  – Mick  #2.  ARMADILLO BOY:  I wrote this one quickly.  The story here is about fitting in, finding a sense of belonging.  This can be taken as a positive or a negative – depending on what you do to fit in and your reasons for doing it.   In my story the morality of it all is a bit nebulous.  The setting is a carnival or freak show.   Main characters… Armadillo Boy and Gorilla Girl… “You are one of us“!  The second verse has a great reference to a super Husker Du album – Zen Arcade.  I had been listening to a lot of Guided By Voices and the tempo and opening guitar riff totally reflect that.  John’s guitar part and Rob’s excellent drumming just totally make this one a Superdrag homage which I love.  Ron’s harmonie are awesome and in my opinion make the song.  We really toyed around with the outro – the “Don’t keep her waiting” part is John singing.  Ron and I sing the harmonies, “Yeah!”.  Rob was so nervous about recording his drums on this one – he thought it was going to take all night to get his drums right but I think we got on the 2nd or 3rd take.  One of my favorite tracks. – Mick  #3. SINKHOLE: “When everything is wrong; I keep my head in a song.” Seems about right for a life credo, no?”Sinkhole” is one of those songs built around a guitar riff that had been banging around in my head for a while. I love the guitar tones (Gibson 335/Mick and Gibson SG/John) and the three distinct rhythmic patterns that make up the song. Lyrically… I’ve always been fascinated by sinkholes. I remember when I was a kid, my dad and I went over to my Grandmom’s house in Trenton. Inexplicably, a big hole in the ground appeared in her backyard. My dad and I had to fill it (mostly my dad if I remember right). My grandmom lived in a row house, so we had to haul the filler dirt through her house (no other access to the yard). Amazing to think the earth can just randomally open up and swallow us – terrifying really. Good material for a song in my opinion. “Under the green grass; there is a sinkhole…” Ahhh! – Mick  #4.  WAITING FOR A RIDE:   The verses for this one are probably 7 or 8 years old.  I was trying to rip off/rewrite the Kinks’ song “Tired of Waiting”.  I wrote the chorus more recently on the piano.  Then the band gave it the old Pixies/Nirvana low verse/loud chorus treatment and it really started to happen.  Lyrically it’s more about what it’s not about.  It reminds me of some of my early writing for the Dipsomaniacs when I tried to focus in on the minute details of everyday life.  The setting is just a kid standing on a corner waiting for his mum to pick him up; she might have forgotten about him because he’s been waiting a long time.  He’s bored.  He needs to rely on others to drive him around – ah the freedom a driver’s license provides, but we’re always in such a hurry sometimes there’s a peace to waiting.  “I’m waiting and the day goes by, there it goes again…”  – Mick        #5.  HOUSTON, WE HAVE A DRINKING PROBLEM:  Sonically speaking… meaning the sound and arrangement… this is my favorite track.  I tried this one as a piano ballad and as a Dylanesque folky tune but nothing worked.  The version on the album was a real full band collaboration – it came together over a  series of practices down in Pine Hill, NJ at drummer Rob Martin’s baement.  The inspiration for the song came from a front page NY Post article.  I took the headline and ran with it, made it mine.  I love the idea of astronauts wandering around lost, asking for directions, smoking cigarettes, drinking martinis, waiting in line for the free lunch… all in full astronaut gear.  You know the Buzz Light Year helmet, big white suit, and moon boots.  You can dress people up, put them in office, a movie, music video, or a space shuttle… but they have the same weaknesses and strengths as the rest of us.  Oh, the Cheap Trick reference in verse one sort of captures the same idea.  I think.  – Mick    #6.  FLETCHER:  The opening lines are from the Steinbeck novel The Pearl…”we are cheated at birth to the prices of our coffins…”  There’s also another lyrical nod to Paul Westerberg in there somewhere.  Themes include:  man finding his place in a hostile  world;  survival of the fittest; class discrimiation; poor getting poorer.   The spoken word stuff that comes in during the outro is the interogation scene from Doestoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.   Well now that I’ve proven this song is lyrically a big mess (not sure what it’s all about honestly).  I do know that a Fletcher is a maker of arrows, so I took the title form the 2nd verse.  It’s like the Who’s Tommy – I love it but I lose the plot about 1/2 way through.  “Fletcher” musically…  Bechamps’ bass line is wicked and harmonies very nice indeed.  I love John Williams’ guitar riff in the middle and outro.  Brilliant very Superdrag type stuff.  Brilliant drumming from Mr. Martin throughout.  This one was actually a lot of work and a long time in the making.  Glad we stuck with it! – Mick #7.  COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP BLUES:  This song was perfect the first night we played it – just as it is, it was and always will be.  Simple stuff but one of my favorites.  It’s a song about that moment when you realize you need to get the hell out of wherever it is you are… “I just don’t belong here anymore”.  Each verse is a different story about someone dropping out of college… verse 1 and 2 is a a kid at school in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship.  Verse 3 is a track/running scholarship to West Virginia.  Verse 4 is a school in Pennsylvania (my story).  Home is good ol’ NJ of course.  I especially enjoyed playing the piano on this, Rob Martin marked his drum stick on the spot where he got the perfect rim shot hit.  John capoed up to play the rhythm guitar and Ron took many takes to nail that high harmony… but he got it.  We rarely play this one live though I have a great memory of playing this in Richmond, VA while a couple waltzed in front of us (I remember the girl had a red dress and the guy a white dress shirt).   – Mick  #8.  ALL YOU HAD:  I wrote this one for a former student of mine who died tragically while attempting to save his mother from a house fire.  Chorus: “We saw the flames in the morning light, out of the flames you came out alive, but you went back inside where you laid down your life, and that’s all you have here, you gave all you had…”  Bobby was posthumously awarded the Carnegie Medal in 2009 for his heroism.  Read more about Bobby here, and here.   – Mick  #9.  LEAVE ME IN THE COMA:  I wrote the words for this one on a notebook when I was feeling… sort of antisocial I guess (“Leave me in the coma boys…. leave me in my bed, safe inside my head….”).  The melody of the song sort of evolved around the opening guitar riff (I broke out the Big Muff pedal for that gnarly tone!).  The chord progression reminds me of a Cure song somehow.  Very 80s.  We played this for the first time in Baltimore, MD – we were playing “one more song” before the end of the set and someone requested something funky.  Funky is not something we typically do well – this is what we provided.   – Mick #10.  SCREAM:  This is the last track we recorded for the album.  We had recorded another version of it earlier but we ended up changing the introduction, so we got together for one last session to get this one right.  I had to go out and buy a new harmonica for this track.  The harp I was using totally broke in half about 1/2 way through, so I ran out to the music store and picked up a new “D” harp – the new one sounded sooo much better.   This song has turned into a real great live song – real rocker! – Mick #11.  THREE NIGHTS: This song was originally a country tune.  We upped the tempo and added some gain to the electric amps and here it is.   Message – live life to the fullest; pack the energy, intensity, and fun of three into one.  Title track.  #12.  ANY OL’ THING:  This is one of the songs I actually did some research to write – two of the cars I sing about (The Chevy Caprice, Dodge Coronet) I actually owned.  A few others I remember friends driving (the Chevy Chevette….).  Some of the others I did some Google searches for “Worst Cars Ever”.    The Pinto was an obvious one.  El Camino’s are an easy target.  I like the local references – “NJ Turnpike”, “95”, “Route 1”.  And of course I paraphrased Woody Guthrie on the line about the Redwood forest.  Nice light way to end the album.  Rob and I recorded this one live – with me singing and playing the acoustic while he drummed.  Hey, thanks for reading and let me know if you have any comments or questions.      – Mick