Mountains - this was one of the last tunes I wrote for the project (Panorama Motel) - it was months after the split. I was starting to come around a bit; get out and enjoy Colorado, meet new people, "find myself" again as it were. Around the time I wrote "Mountains," I was hanging out quite a bit with this free-spirited, peace-and-love neo-hippy type in Boulder, who turned out to be a very positive influence on me - good for my general well-being and overall "getting over" phase. She also sort of forced me into listening to upbeat music again, which was a big part of deciding to write an upbeat beach/Afro-Pop-ish tune like "Mountains."

And of course, I was born and raised in the Colorado mountains, so I guess I've always thought of that as square one, the place you return to when everything is falling apart. Although the song is written/sung to a girl, it was essentially a pep-talk for myself. The opening few lines, "Maybe your bones are heavy, maybe your hands are weak, maybe you're walking the tightrope, maybe you're walking the plank. Maybe you're stuck in motion, maybe you're buried deep, but baby despair don't suit you, and you don't need it anyway..." - I was really directing all of that at myself.

And I think I had decided to have a llama star in the music video before the song had even been fully-written. ;-)