Sandman's Journal

My new CD is getting mastered this week. I'd originally planned to call it All the Things I Done Wrong, but now I'm going with Chemicals in the Wheat. The cover artwork, an intricate paper cut by my friend Nikki McClure, is of a man in a field working under ominous skies. He has a pair of pliers in his right hand and appears to be disassembling a barbwire fence.

The songs, mostly guitar-driven electronic Americana, total over fifty minutes.

They are:

1. Corpse
2. Michael Jackson
3. Strange Medicine
4. All the Things I Done Wrong
5. Day's Wages
6. Buddha Chant
7. Pegasus (You & I)
8. Mister, I Can't Save Your Daughter
9. O, Tsunami
10. Your Mind is Mine
11. Swine Flu
    

Back story to the title Chemicals in the Wheat: My Grandfather Nick Herak, Sr., who died twenty years ago, was a very Catholic and Croatian cattle rancher/wheat farmer. The palms of his hands would sometimes bleed like a stigmata. He'd joke that his affliction was a gift from the Holy Spirit. I asked Mom about this earlier this month, and she pragmatically blamed it on "chemicals in the wheat" that he encountered through daily work out in the field.