"Angels of Change" was inspired partly by hearing an interview with Doreen Virtue on National Public Radio, of all places. She's written a lot of books about angels and if my abiding belief in them seems foolish, well, what can I tell you? Maybe I'm far from the only one, since this up-tempo [for reggae] number was a top 10 MP3 download on vonHummer.com for quite a while.

"Angels of Change" was also partly inspired by Wim Wender's swell 80s film "Wings of Desire," which is probably obvious to anybody familiar with that film, or even the lousy Nicolas Cage re-make from the 90s.

This was the first song done in a series of three recordings with violinist Brian Eliason. I answered an ad Brian put in the "musicians seeking" classifieds of Willamette Week, summer of 2001. He was looking for a art rock, Peter Gabriel-like guitarist to partner with on me. Unfortunately, what he got was me. I came over with my 4-track and some songs I'd pre-recorded to get his electric violin on.

As you can hear, he was really quite good, although perhaps a bit relentless (as fiddles tend to be. See also: Bob Dylan's "Desire" album.) He always added a delay and slight flange, but I shrugged it off. I felt lucky to have his help, and it sounded amazing to me, the sparse arrangement and the two instruments. We recorded two more ("The Night" and "I Am Polluted") and called it a day. We seemed to work well together, so I invited him to play at my first vonHummer gig on the 15th of August at a bar called Laurelthirst. And what a disaster that was!

We only had about a week to prepare 2 sets of material. He could saw along well enough, although, at best, his playing was interchangeable. Evening of the show, he turns up wearing a skin-tight black tee with the sleeves cut off. Silly. And his jewfro was all teased up like Kid-n-play. He had a girlfriend in tow who never said a word. Just stared.

Wish I'd been so lucky. Helvetica was there and occupied a booth with some acquaintances who showed up. She brought a small camera to tape the show with, but all she did was set it up on the booth and point it in the direction of the stage, letting it run. Then she sat down with her friends and ran her yap the whole night. The tape was useless on that score alone, much less that it was too dark and missed the stage for most of the performance.

Which, as it turned out was fine, because things went badly from the start.

I was enthused at first to find the bar packed with a happy hour crowd who'd stuck around to see what the lobster guy was all about. Brian uncased his violin and started plugging in. "Wait until I get back to get sound levels," I told him. I needed fifteen to get my suit on. " He told me okay and I flew out the door to the car to get changed.

15 minutes later I come back and the bar is filled with the horrible shriek of Brian tuning his fiddle at full volume, feeding back. Patrons are wincing in agony and desperately clamping palms over their ears to block out the din. He was oblivious to, not only his sonic torture, but to the way it had just about cleared our full house.

The show went on, but not too well. He played obliviously, like his violin was a bagpipe—just wailing on, the same old arpeggios, but it probably covered my mistakes, so no complaints. At the end of the show, he and the girlfriend split without a word, not even caring to get his share of the door. Never returned my calls, never saw him again. Much to my relief, and to his, I'm sure.

Extra credit to my muse, for lending me lyrics that reference an Aerosmith live album AND a Stevie Nicks song.