I wrote “Seventeen” on my trip moving to Baltimore in November 2000 … in a police station.

In a dungeon!  :-)  No really, in a basement in Baltimore with some very old equipment. My cheap ass Yamaha keyboard as the only instrument, a mixing board and a mic. Didn’t even have a computer or a program like ProTools or Sonar or nothing. Which meant I had to play every single friggin’ part of every track the whole song through several times over. Me who could barely play chopsticks before I started recording this. It was exhausting.

The Virgin Poet was not the album I intended to produce first. I had another album called “Stripped” (until Xtina took that title!) I wanted to produce as my first project. But when I realized I would not be working with my cousin as I had hoped, could not rely on his recording expertise but had to do it myself AND foot the bill, I didn’t want to risk what I thought was a fantastic selection of songs on my inexperience and empty pockets. So, instead, I came up with “The Virgin Poet”. And it was indeed a learning experience.

” … completing it. I can’t really describe what that felt like.

… the process itself. Learning everything new, falling down, making mistakes, being disappointed by not getting things the way I heard them in my head, etc.

The first song I ever performed was “Tear Down These Walls”. I performed it an open mic night at a place called Pelumas where everyone else had an acoustic guitar. It went over like a lead balloon.

The first time I performed “Seventeen” was for my friend Dawnyelle’s variety show. People went nuts over that song. They loved it. I felt better after that, like maybe I could do this.

Angels in Flight and The Alley were very last minute additions. I seriously can’t imagine them not being on this record now.

The Alley is my favorite track on this album. It was the last song I recorded and I think it shows. Production quality wise it’s just better than the rest of the CD. The layers of music, the vocal variety, it just moves. I wrote it and recorded it within the same week.

I’ve only performed the Alley once, at my CD Release. It was heavily choreographed and I’m SO not a dancer. I worked so hard on that show, on that song particularly. I think I had 30 something odd people show up. By contrast, Deviant’s CD release had over 200, so I was definitely moving in the right direction.

Mud is one of the most misunderstood tracks of any I think I’ve ever written. It’s not about something so gross I don’t even want to write about it here, but a journalist seriously said that’s what he thought it was about. I was inspired to write this song from a picture I saw. It was this beautiful black and white photo with these 2 naked white guys embraced outside, may have been a beach, but they were covered in wet dirt, aka mud. . It was just very fucking erotic and I wrote Mud after seeing that picture.

Finding Ed Mannix and OUTmusic was a major turning point for me.

Being on This Way Out, hosted by JD Doyle, was the first time I really felt like I had a shot at being successful in music.

My favorite moment from the Virgin Poet is when I performed “World Coming Down” and someone confided to me that it made them cry. That made all the frustration worth it.