DESCRIPTION:
This is a real oldie. When I wrote this song, I was performing regularly at an open mic in a coffee shop called Twice Told. It was a very popular event; the shop's little back room was frequently filled to capacity. This was my most requested song from those days, and I usually played it on their ancient piano. If I had to describe any one particular period of my career as my heyday, this would have been it. The Wolves is, in fact, about one of the performers I saw come through Twice Told. She was a young girl and she played piano and sang. We didn't call people "hipster" back then, but if we had then we would have called her one. She tried too hard to sing and perform like Tori Amos, and she performed a song about the big bad wolf. The open mic drew lots of pretentious folk, but her pretentiousness irked me. She was a very theatrical person, quite pleased with herself, and she'd brought along a coterie of sycophants who were tickled pink by her crashing the scene. She was certain that she'd stolen the show, despite a lukewarm reaction to her performance, and I hated her obliviousness. She sang with a knowing smirk, but she didn't know anything. She was wrapped up in her tiny world of berets, chai tea, clove cigarettes, and feigned ennui. In this song, the wolves of the apocalypse come to claim hers as the first life lost in the slaughter. Her self-seriousness counts for nothing as she burns. But the song isn't just about spite; the wolves come for me, too. As much as I hated her, I was attracted to her as well. Even as I lash out at her, I punish myself for being consumed with rage and loneliness. I make reference, in the chorus, to my difficult childhood and to my long-growing doubts about faith. All told, The Wolves is about the sadness and futility of misplaced passion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Blood feeder, mind reader
Deceptively lovely
The summer is cold and
The children die hungry
They wait in the shadows
They burn in your forebrain
Marauding, relentless
The monsters with no names

So cry to me bitterly. Say it's not fair
Run to your god. He would help if he cared.
Why can one child not have peace for one night?
Soon they are coming to kill me outright
You will be first
When the wolves arrive

So trusting, so certain
The virgins burns slower
The air is alive with
The scent of your flower
So weep for your children
The broken, the empty
The wolves are inside you
Consuming you wholly

So cry to me bitterly. Say it's not fair
Run to your god. He would help if he cared.
Why can one child not have peace for one night?
Soon they are coming to kill me outright
You will be first
When the wolves arrive