"GOOD NOISE"

KIM: I discovered this song whilst driving across America a couple of years ago with my daughter Polly. It was one of those radio hits that never had a chart format to fit, not country enough for country charts (whatever that means??) not AOR enough for whatever AOR means?!!

ROD: That’s the first single. It’s just such a happy, up-vibe song. To me it’s the centrepiece of the whole album. It’s the one we demoed really early on and it was always going to be a single. It just sets such a strong, positive vibe that I based the whole album on that track.

"I DON’T MEAN MAYBE"

KIM: Thanks to Keith Glass I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Buddy Miller last year on his brief but memorable visit accompanying Emmylou Harris. I asked him how he felt about us recording this song. He told me it had been considered for the last Brooks and Dunn CD, but was eventually dropped in favour of another of his songs ("My Love Will Follow You"). He said, "Sure go ahead and record it, but don’t forget to send me a copy! It’s a new experience for me, people covering my songs, no one’s been interested for the last twenty years, I’m flattered!"

ROD: We’re all huge fans of Buddy Miller. The Wheel are a band who like to play good, bright shuffle grooves and "I Don’t Mean Maybe" gives us a chance to explore that Bakersfield sound.

"THE NEXT TIME OUR WORLDS COLLIDE"

KIM: Most country songwriters would love to write a song that George Jones would sing, and I’m no exception. It would be the ultimate honour. So George, I hope you like the demo!

ROD: This song has been knocking around for seven or eight years. I demoed this in my bedroom a long time ago and we never did anything with it. We decided on the record to feature Gina Jeffreys and have her sing the harmony on this track. It’s amazing how well Kim and Gina blend together and its great for The Wheel to be able to play subtle ballads like this.

"GET GONE"

KIM: A few years ago Kevin Bennett gave me a compilation tape he’d made of much loved but little known new England (USA) bar band NRBQ, featuring amongst many other delights, the guitar, voice and songs of Al Anderson. Four years ago Al left the band in search of fame and fortune as a songwriter in Nashville; he has since written many hits for a variety of artists. "Get Gone" is one of the many gems on his critically acclaimed and politically incorrect third solo album, "Pay Before You Pump".

ROD: "Get Gone" is one of my favourites in that it’s probably the most commercial tune on the album. I’ve heard a couple of Al Anderson tunes recently and they’ve knocked me for six.

"OLD BLACK CROW"

KIM: One of the things I’ve discovered in the 17 years I’ve lived in Australia is that I’ll never be a true Australian, in the sense of never having the cultural perspective of an Australian; I believe you have to be born here to fit that category. The Aboriginal people believe that you are intimately connected to the place you were born, you belong there and are a part of that place. Although that belief is not part of my cultural make-up I have a certain empathy with it.

ROD: This is actually my favourite tune on the whole record. The most interesting thing about this track is that it’s a perfect marriage of the music totally soundscaping the lyric. What’s on the album is the demo we recorded. We loved the demo so much that we decided that was what we were going to use.

"SKIN DEEP"

KIM: This song was started in the mid ‘80s after a friend of mine working in TV suggested I submit a song for a new TV series set in the fashion industry called Skin Deep. Not finding a great deal of common ground between myself and the subject matter I guess led me to create a (woefully inappropriate) cynical diatribe against narcissism and vacuousness. I was reticent to submit the song and the show got dumped anyway.

ROD: This was more of a rock ‘n’ roll groove for The Wheel to play in. We love to explore the use of fiddle into those rock ‘n’ roll grooves, and the way we can twist fiddle lines around big electric guitar hooks like that.

"TAKE IT LIKE A MAN"

KIM: Beneath this simple tale of unrequited love, lies my very convoluted motivation. Until we wrote this song I would not consider the expression, "Take it like a man" as part of my natural vocabulary, due to its inherent implication of masculine solidarity (a bogus agenda if ever there was one). We saw it as a way to turn around it’s meaning, (to accept love, and understand your own vulnerability in the face of it), and to undermine its original outdated political intent.

ROD: This song is actually one of the reasons The Wheel was formed in the first place. About four years ago Kim came to our studio on the Central Coast and we sat down in the lounge room and put a couple of microphones up and recorded about four songs acoustically. This was one of those songs and when we listened back to the tapes about a month later we decided to form a band.

"SAW YOU RUNNIN’"

KIM: For a while now we’ve been looking for a way to feature the banjo in a contemporary country setting. Rod found this Thom Moore song originally recorded by inspirational ‘80s American bluegrass revisionists New Grass Revival and suggested we try it. Well kd lang did it for the accordion with "Constant Craving", McCartney did it for the bagpipes with "The Mull Of Kintyre". It was time or the banjo.

ROD: I first heard this by the New Grass Revival. I’ve known it for years and we really wanted to be able to incorporate banjo into The Wheel which was something we’d done without up til now.

"I’LL TAKE THE BLAME"

KIM: Inspired by the Bakersfield sound popularised in the ‘60s by Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart, etc. The style, revived in the ‘70s by Emmylou Harris and again by Dwight Yoakam in the ‘80s, is most recognisable for its loping shuffle and rhythmic piano counterpoint.

ROD: This another Bakersfield groove. Mick wouldn’t let us put an album out without a twin fiddle part and "I’ll Take the Blame" got the guernsey. I love this song.

"MY SISTER JENNIFER AND ME"

KIM: I wrote the first few lines of this song a couple of years ago off the top of my head about nothing in particular (I never start with a subject in mind). Months later I was overseas visiting my family and my mum gave me a present: a book documenting the history of the village I grew up in, in England. I was flicking through the pages when I spotted a photograph of my old primary school and in the classroom, along with the teacher and a group of her pupils, was my sister tying ribbons in her hair.

ROD: This is Kim’s favourite. It’s a beautiful little song about growing up with his sister and growing world apart as they get into later life. It’s a much more subtle side of the band and it gives Mick a chance to be really subtle on the fiddle. I love the fact that this album can have ballads like this on it.

"WALKING IN THE SHADOW OF THE MAN"

KIM: This is a meditation on the myth of history, inspired by the book "The Chalice and The Blade" by Rianne Eisler.

ROD: This was one we felt compelled to put on the album. It’s our most popular live tune. Live we play about a 20 minute guitar solo at the end and it broke my heart to cut it down to six minutes on the album. People just love it and we figured if they love it that much then it’s got to be there.

"LET’S PRETEND"

KIM: This song deals with two unhappily married ex-lovers, curious after all these years that maybe there’s still something there, who decided (unknown to their current partners) to find out for sure by spending one last day together.

ROD: This is a really long ballad. It’s a bit of a homage to Lee Roy Parnell. He records grooves like this all the time with beautiful slide guitar playing. It’s a real feature for a friend of ours, Clayton, on the organ and one that we actually got to play live in the studio then left it pretty much as it is.