"You have your three big things that you can talk about, basically, if you’re going to write something that actually means something to you as a human being, which is Love, God and Death. That’s basically the thing. Love, which occupies a lot of our time, because we don’t like being lonely. God, because everyone wants to know that there’s a reason behind what they’re doing and what the hell is going on. And death is just the reality of your finite time here...Whatever gets your creative juice flowing. Some people write amazing protest songs because they want things to be right. That doesn’t float my boat but I say that there’s three things, there’s three guideposts, but it’s not like a math problem where you touch on one of them and it’s a decent song. I have lots of other interests, but there’s something about when you sit down to write something you want to sing over and over again, it usually comes down to one of those three things.”
--Sam Beam, from Growing a Bard (Paste, Issue #36, October 2007)
Naked As We Came