Gerard O'Riley

Part of my "Judge" series of old western songs that I like to write whenever an idea pops in my head. This one is about a poor man in the old west with a family to feed, and he decides that some people have too much and he doesn't have nearly enough. He decides to become an outlaw. This was a very true story for the time, though it's not based on any real-life person.

I have a habit of writing songs about women's names. Not sure why, but I usually end up really liking them. There's no real story to this one at all. What I like about it is that it can be plug-and-play with any name that fits at the end. Rebecca, Cassandra, Jennifer, whatever. It works.

A song I wrote about a situation where a girl called me hostile, and I said she was cold. The rest kind of just wrote itself. Despite some of the lines seeming a bit on the dark side, it's actually much more of an upbeat love song.

For Americans, it doesn't rightly matter which of the two political parties are in office; it ends up being the same result: Life becomes harder for Americans, as we lose more and more of our freedoms. Each side blames the other, and people just stay angry. For me, I think of America like Atlantis, in the sense that everything good about it is seemingly buried. I wrote this song to reflect that feeling.

Unfortunately, this is a song that all too many people relate to now. Myself, I've been out of work for a while, and the bills are piling up and money in scarce. Millions of people are stuck in dead-end jobs and are miserable. Working their fingers to the bone isn't what they wanted to do with their lives. But they need the money. Most of us don't have a choice in the matter. I wrote this song out of respect to all the hard-working people who never seem to get ahead.