| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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knew the sort of energy I needed in my life at that point. Some birth energy. So she came and took over my bedroom, and set about to have a baby. Her mom was there and midwives, and friends: the whole house was a'buzz with this new birth. I didn't have much to do at first but finish the dishes and wander around. It went on for two days or so.
My friend Roger was visiting from Nashville
(he'd had had similar tragedy)
and we sat at the kitchen table and drank some wine
and started making up these crazy songs.
And we started with this name of this silly band
called "The Stokemen"
- Which was a joke about this fictional band who came out of the Sixties. They were a surf music band called The Stokemen, and they had a huge hit called 'Stokin'. And then, wanted to capitalize on that, they came out with
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their next hit, and it was called 'Stokin' Again.' Then they went through the years, and by '67, they did 'Stokin' in Hawaii.' In '71, they did 'Stokin' in Nashville,' and in '74 they did 'Still Stokin'. It was this joke we made up. And then , we started writing the songs - the actual songs that were part of the joke. That just led into writing songs that had nothing to do with the joke. We must have got the beginnings of six or seven songs that we still play to this day, all in three hours at the kitchen table - 'Stokin' My Life Away' [laughs] 'Just Can't Stop 'Stokin''. We did seven of them and were exhausted! We walk away from the table - "Hey, I got one more! and he goes: "I just can't stop, just can't stop, just can't stop s-t-o-k-i-nnnn'" It's perfect how it came about because it's a joke in the face of |