I wrote "Odds Are Against Me," for myself as an encouragement to keep doing music and someday find my success at it. At the time I was married to a dream squasher of the 1st Division, whose anxiety drove her to see my art as a threat to her security. It dates to around 1999 or so.

Round about that time must have been when I heard Howard Stern point out to some wannabe that more people get struck by lightning each year than become rock stars. It was a very different world then, wasn't it?

There are still rock stars today, but...It's almost like the deflation that's ruined monarchies. Once kings were anointed, crowned. They ruled to the fear and respect of the mere commoners below. Now what are they? Figureheads, no divine right anywhere to be found. Everyone is their own king now, really.

So it is with rock stars. Once they were "discovered." Lifted from the mere muck of musicians, they ruled with an inevitability of being a Chosen One. The expense and exclusivity of recording technology, promotion and distribution demanded it. Now everybody's their own rock star, if they care to be.

I remember having a lot of difficulty recording this one. A million takes. I hadn't composed anything this tricky to play before, it seemed. The riff in the song surprised me when I came up with it. Very whimsical. And the interlude with the descending bass chording overlaid with ascending high guitar chording seems to be the very struggle of the artist: against doubt, against survival, against the odds.