What would replace the rent with the stars above?
Replace the need with love?
Replace the anger with the tide?
Replace the ones that you love?
One of the least important things about this song is intimately connected with one of the most significant. Life’s funny that way. Laura was the first person to play it for me. In the days of my earliest infatuation with her, we were sitting on the floor of her room, listening to music, and fiddling around with her guitar. She was practicing a variety of things (many of them from Sarah McLachlan’s “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” album, which I had also just heard for the first time). At the time, I had no idea who the Indigo Girls were { “I mean, c’mon, they’re a girl band” – I would have said}, but I did know and love R.E.M. Every member of R.E.M. performs on this record, but none so spectacularly as Michael Stipe. { Honestly, has any other band ever done so much mentoring? Eddie Vedder discussed this when he inducted R.E.M. into the rock and roll hall of fame, and you can find that here, here, and here. But seriously? Peter Buck contributed great things to albums by The Replacements. Michael Stipe shepherded Thom Yorke in his time of crisis. Then Eddie Vedder. And a host of other bands from the Athens, GA area – including the Indigo Girls. And I’ll never stop thinking about what might have come out of the “acoustic” stuff he was working on with Kurt Cobain. The man really is a dynamo…} Now, as anyone who will have heard old recordings of band practice will know {And yes, I realize this represents a small, miserable population of people who will likely never speak to me again.}, I once had the uncanny ability to sound just like Mr. Stipe when speaking into a tape recorder. So, naturally, Laura thought I would be able to sing this song with her. And, naturally, that I’d be able to play along with her.