Tammy Cochran || Official Website

This song is a reflection of someone who's stayed in a relationship for too long, who's just hanging on because it's comfortable and easy—even though it's clear that it's really over and the heart knows it's time to move on. Nobody's done anything wrong, things have just run their course. As hard as it is to accept it, move on and start over, you just have to do it at some point. We've all been guilty of staying on too long when we know it's not going any further. It's easy to leave when you've been betrayed, but much harder to make the move when nobody's done anything dramatic to cause the split.

This is kind of a self-reflection song based on personal experience. It’s about being busy with your career and being on the road all time while my friends are all married with families and raising kids. Meanwhile, I was living in a big house all alone with a dog. It’s all about having a successful life on outside and not so much behind closed doors. People may admire what you have accomplished but at end of the day, you’re alone and there’s no one to share your life with. When something great happens, you come home and there’s nobody there to talk to. In this business, it’s so easy to get consumed with work and trying to get ahead and make money. Then you turn around one day and realize you’ve left out a few important things.

This fun little country ditty is the perfect follow up to the emotionally heavy "Gone." It compares falling in love to a roller coaster ride. My favorite line is "love's the ticket, stamp your hand, stand in line for the ride of your life." Love, romance and relationships are like an amusement park ride. There are going to be ups and downs, and you don't really know where you're headed. But the good news is it's a great ride if you can stand it. It's upbeat and totally positive. One thing I love about this album is that it has so many different moods on it, and this song is definitely one of the happier ones.

I wrote this one shortly after 9/11, just after the U.S. had declared war on the Taliban in Afghanistan. I was on tour with George Strait at the time and I had performed many Spirit of America shows at a lot of military bases across the country. These were to show support for our troops who were being deployed overseas. That was a time when everyone was doing the ‘we support our troops' songs, which were great, only nobody was writing songs about the families, the mothers, wives, sisters, sons and daughters they were leaving behind. Those left behind are fighting a war within themselves the whole time their loved one is gone, trying to keep strong. I wrote this with Patricia Gray in the back of a tour bus after another show where I looked out at a sea of camouflage and wondered, how would I feel if one of these guys was someone that meant the world to me.

This song addresses domestic abuse, a touchy topic that all country fans have heard before, but "In Our House" does it from a fresh angle. It's all about how good a couple may look from the outside looking in. But in that house, it's a whole different reality. The protagonist just left the abusive relationship and friends keep asking how she can live without this so-called "wonderful" guy. Everyone thinks he's a fabulous person and a strong Christian man. But she's wearing sunglasses on cloudy days to hide her black eyes. She's free from the situation now. But when she drives by houses with little white picket fences, they look sweet and loving to her on the outside, but that same picket fence was like a prison wall for her.

This is another tune whose exact inspiration I can't recall. The woman is a relationship with someone who says he loves her, but then changes his mind for no apparent reason. People seem to throw those three little words "I Love You" around carelessly and say them without really feeling them. She finds out that this person she gave her heart and soul to is leaving and doesn't love her after all. So she's falling from that wonderful feeling of being loved down to looking at someone who just changed his mind about what he said.

When I first heard the demo of 'Love Won't Let Me,' I looked at Billy Joe like he was crazy, 'cause it was such a pop demo. It was a great demo, but it was a pop demo, and I said, 'You know I sing country, right?' And he said, 'Trust me, trust me, trust me.' We went in, and did a guitar/vocal version to find keys and think about arrangements, and that's when I realized that it was country. "But I think the reason I really, really like that song is because when you are in a new relationship, and you've been hurt, the last thing you wanna do is jump right back into another one. But when you meet someone that makes you feel this way, you can't not go. You can't not try.

We call it 'The Cigarette Song,' for obvious reasons. When you first fall in love, you have all these emotions in your mind, in your heart, and you don't know how to express them, because there's never one word that's strong enough to tell somebody how much you love them. I guess I tried to do it with this song. To me, the song is more about the emotional side of love than it is the physical side of love. It just ended up sounding like it's about the physical side. But I was trying to put my heart in my pen, and that's how it came out.

I just love the way this song is written. I think we all have been let down, and probably been in love with someone who promised us forever, and then decided, "No, I think not." That's just as much a part of music as the happy stuff, and I think it's just real.

We were cutting in the studio, and we had all our songs chosen, but when this song came along, we just immediately said, 'Something's gotta go so we can make room for this song,' because it's so incredible. It reminds me of everybody that I know. When I was in the studio singing this song, I had my eyes closed, and I could see the people that I went to school with that were these people. I've been to a class reunion. I had a wonderful time, but the people that you thought were going change the world maybe didn't do everything that they thought they were going do, or you thought they were gonna do, but they're very happy with their lives anyway, and it's just a reminder that everything happens for a reason.

Honestly, this song doesn't really relate to the theme, but there's gotta be a good controversial song in every country album! I am not an accomplished guitar player - not at all - but I learned a new chord, and every time I learn a new chord, I have to write a song with the chord in it. It inspires me somehow. So I was actually sitting on my bed, practicing my new chord, and I came up with this melody. It was so haunting, and the song really needed to be a very, very dark, mysterious kinda thing. So I came up with the title, "The Dead Of The Night." I'm a big fan of Lifetime TV, and you have a lot of real-life stories on Lifetime. They aired one about an abusive marriage, and the child was always trying to take up for the mom, and it got me going, so I called Patricia Gray, and told her the story. I said, "Listen, What do you think?" It was about 10:00 at night, and she was like, "Are you OK? Do you need to talk? Is something wrong?" Now we laugh about it. She reflects back to that and says, "I was so worried about you." I'm calling her at 10:00 going, "Listen to this! It's about killing somebody, with this really weird chord in it." We wrote it about six weeks later, after we'd had a real good laugh about my whacko idea. We figured it would never get cut, but we thought it was cool.

"If You Can" was the first single that I ever released, and I absolutely love the song. It did well for a first single, but I think there are a lot of country fans who may not be familiar with the song. It's the song that got me started, and I really wanted more people to have the opportunity to hear it, so we made it a bonus track on the new album.