Song By Song With Pat Green: What I'm For

FOOTSTEPS OF OUR FATHERS: That song came from the line "As I look down at the brother of my daughter/As I kneel and kiss the sister of my son." I had that line for a very long time – maybe two years. I loved it because it was a way for my to sing about my kids, without ever using the word "kids." Nobody wanted to write the song with me. Eventually I was in Boston playing the Avalon Ballroom across the street Fenway Park, and I ran into my friend Brett James and he came up with the title and from there it came quickly. I love that there’s enough ambiguity in the song. I love to leaves holes in songs so people can read them their own way. "Wave on Wave" was one of those songs too. To me, this is the best song I’ve ever been a part of writing.

WHAT I’M FOR: One of two songs on the album that I didn’t write. It’s by Marc Beeson and Allen Shamlin. When my record company sends me songs -- and they literally send thousands -- my usual reaction is to throw up a little in my mouth. But both this song and "Let Me," my producer brought to me. What stuck me about "What I’m For" was that it was all wheat, no chaff. I thought maybe the song was too perfect – I remember thinking anyone could have a hit of this song, but I really hope it’s me.

FEELING PRETTY GOOD TONIGHT: That’s one of my favorite songs on the record. I almost put this as the first song because the first song is generally a song you’re going to play for people the rest of your life. I wrote it with Bobby Pinson in a Nashville hotel room in the middle of the day on a day off with nothing to do that night and in that cocoon I started drinking to get myself in the songwriter mold – like an artists putting on an old favorite smock. This particular hotel had my favorite wine on the room service, For three hours, I went back to college and made a fool of myself but I had a great time and I hope wrote a great tune. I have a motto in my life – everything in moderation . . . including moderation.

LUCKY: I was sitting around one afternoon writing with my drummer Justin Pollard and Patrick Davis, and along came this list song. List songs can be easy to write because they’re usually just a long list and a chorus. I was blanking on the chorus but Patrick Davis really came through on that chorus. I didn’t think the song would change the world or save the whales, but I just thought it was the American Guy ditty that any average Joe could relate to. It’s my "Glory Days" – I hope. For the record, I’ve always loved Springsteen and his ability to sing the phone book live and destroy the house, but with The Rising I found my favorite album of all time.

IN THIS WORLD: What I was getting at – and this is the only song on the album I wrote by myself – is that we always seem to grow up focused on the money, on pride and the great piling and storage of money. Walt Wilkins -- one of my favorite legendary Texas writers -- has a line about watching it rain out of his favorite window, and I just kind of fell onto that one night and an alternate tuning that spoke to me.

COUNTRY STAR: I don’t know what country music will think of that song. I wrote that with Brett James, the same guy I wrote "Footsteps of Our Father" with. He’s a top Nashville cat who wrote "Jesus Take The Wheel" and a bazillion number one hits. We were sitting on my front porch in Fort Worth, Texas. We’re buddies now and it became another of those perfect, wine-fuelled evenings in fall weather when you can sit out all night for days. And Brett said, you know that song "Rock Star" by Nickelback, let’s write the country version." And I said okay, but if we do this, we have to scoop up the names we’re dropping with a front end loader." The song you hear is not what we finished that night. We kind of rounded the corner. Anyone who knows me at all knows just how much I am joking. Obviously, I haven’t worried too much or enough about being a country star.

LET ME: I didn’t write this song, but Marc Beeson is a genius, and the melody hook is bigger than the lyric hook. That French Police sounding chorus is sick it’s so pervasive and completely intoxicating to the listener. The fact that it’s this big love song that never says the word "love" got my attention immediately. My dad is a big critic and a wonderful guy who has described me as his son the one hit wonder. He once said, "Pat, don’t ever sing me one of those stupid songs that rhymes `love’ with `dove’ and `above.’" So I played him this song and he approved.

IN IT FOR THE MONEY: That was one of those "Duh" moments. I was with Patrick Davis, one of those guys I love to write with because we both have this quasi-cynical view of Nashville and the system. We wanted to hit on that a little bit. Like most of songs on this album, once the idea came, the song came in a matter of minutes. Once the pen hit the paper, it didn’t come off until it was written and then it was time for lunch. It’s two stories – one story about a guy meeting a hooker, and the age-old story of love or money there. Then we draw the parallel to fame being a prostitute. I’m not sure if I’m a hooker with a heart of gold – at least the heart of gold part.

CARRY ON: That song is a thousand years old. Our third album was called Carry On. Believe it or not, this is our thirteenth album. So I wrote it ten or eleven years ago, and I wrote it with my mentor in songwriting Walt Wilkins. It was my first trip to Nashville. I’d never seen the place, and we sat in his house all day trying to write a song. I wasn’t an experienced songwriter then -- and I still wouldn’t say I’m a good songwriter -- but we couldn’t get anything out. So we went to Starbucks – at that point there was one in Nashville -- and saw a really pretty girl. Once we saw the pretty girl, the song came quickly.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT: God, that song does not leave a lot open to interpretation. It’s about growing up and cleaning up your act. We all go through it in different ways, and I was going through it as I was writing that song. I guess I just hit that point of not wanting to take yourself -- and this life -- for granted anymore.