b'is this sketchy demo the earliest recording of the song,The Scud Mountain Boys played this tune live a number Im pretty sure its the only version to predate the studioof times. Im almost certain the Pernice Brothers studio recording. There wasnt enough time to flesh it throughline-up jammed on this in the studio when we went to multiple demo takes.make Overcome, but it was among the first in the studio to get cut because I wanted to distance my new record Recording this tune in the studio was pure joy for me. Ifrom the Scuds stuff. Again, it was the 1990s, and had played the whole song down on my trusty Gibsoneverything was overly dramaticat least in my head. It acoustic. Mike Deming suggested we mute the acousticwasnt until we made Yours, Mine & Ours did I believe off the intro four bars, then bring it back in on the top ofthe yallternative country had been blown off the song. bar five. Its subtle, but it tickled me then as it probably would now. Deming also played a beautiful piano leadCourage Up break. Kills me.(demo)But for me the best part is the outro. Deming vampedCourage Up obviously did not make the final cut of on Thoms RMI electric piano, while Thom turned delaysongs for Overcome. It was pretty newly written when and effects knobs. They combined to put a lovely tailwe went into the studio to make the record. I had yet to on that song. have a sense of what kind of song it was. That, and because we were on a pretty tight schedule and budget, The other little tidbit about that song: I never flewI crossed it off the list. We just didnt have the time to in a plane until I was 25. Was always terrified. Somuck with it in the studio. Had I panicked and nixed it much so that in early 1996 when Sub Pop had thetoo soon? Probably. I panicked about everything back Scud Mountain Boys visit the Seattle offices fromthen. Did the record need this tune? Damned if I know. Massachusetts, Stephen and I took the train acrossAnyway, we fleshed it out later, and it shows up on the America. Somewhere in the Midwest I woke at dawnChappaquiddick Skyline album.and looked at the blue country sliding by. I saw in an otherwise empty field a solitary car and a person shiningLet That Show a flashlight into it. I wrote Shine my light into your car(demo) right then in my notebook. Two years later Id pour some water on that line and try to make a song grow. Tom and I recorded Let That Show the same night as Cut You Free. I remember liking it, but it was one of the Song #2 (The Queen of NYC)first songs to get scratched from the Overcome master (earliest demo)list because I thought it was too country. Which is ridiculous, really. But at the time, I wanted to make sure I wrote Song #2 in 1995 while I was working on anOvercome by Happiness was many country miles away organic vegetable farm in Whately, Massachusetts. I wasfrom being pegged as country. Again, had I panicked? living in the aforementioned house on South Street. I had(See above.) Let That Show slid behind the filing been listening to a lot of Freedy Johnston at the time. Upcabinet. In mid 2000 when we started recording the till then I had not written too many songs that strummedrecord The World Wont End, I came across the record-a driving rhythm. I recall writing it in my bedroom in theing included on this LP. By then I saw the song with new evening into the night. It allmusic and lyricscame atears. I wrote the middle eight the song needed, and we once. I played it over and over until the neighbor down- cut a version that fit nicely on that album.stairs shouted up at me to knock it off. Fair point.'