No matter how many upbeat or humorous songs I write, people always ask about the "weird" songs. Why do I write them? My answer is simple and entirely American... I blame my family.

My grandparents met at Ol' Miss University during the Great Depression. There in the town of Oxford lived a disreputable postmaster who wrote what the locals considered to be trashy novels. Years later, his reputation would undergo a remarkable transformation in the estimation of the townsfolk but that wasn't until after he received the Nobel Prize for literature. My grandparents knew him back when you could take writing lessons in his front parlor or take a turn at piloting his Waco C Cabin Cruiser for $5 on a Saturday morning.

I grew up steeped in lore of William Faulkner and his Southern Gothic tales of generational destiny. These were my bedtime stories. Is it any wonder that I developed a macabre sense of humor? It's only too natural for me to write about a bitter divorcee hauling her "past" around in a black Cadillac hearse or declare a break-up with the opening line, "I don't need a post-mortem to see the ghost has flown our love."

Faulkner was famously quoted as saying, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Whether it's defiantly laying stake to an English pirate and Southern Reb birthright in "Where We Come From" or carrying a torch well beyond the grave in "Caroline," I share some of Faulkner's brooding on how the past haunts the present and future.

People complain about dysfunctional families... I've never understood that. To me, even a murder-suicide is just source material, a bedtime story told with a twinkling eye and slight Southern lilt by someone you love who may be long-dead but whose influence remains.

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