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"Gwendolyn"

River Songs
From the 1995 album River Songs
Written by Bret Alexander & The Badlees

In The Badlees 22 year history, we have released 3 songs total with girls' names in the title. "Angeline Is Coming Home", "Sister Shirley", and "Gwendolyn". "Angeline" was about a junkie coming home from rehab and "Sister Shirley" was about a guy searching through California for his runaway sister. Not your typical "girl song" fare. Only "Gwendolyn" bordered on a standard song about a girl.

Ironically we released 2 of those 3 songs as singles, back to back in 1996 ("Angeline" and "Gwendolyn"), so to some we were that band that wrote about chicks. Oh well. I named this tune after my grandmother, but it is certainly not about her.

I like the last verse alot. In musicians circles there is a thing called a "pirate copyright". What that is is this: If you write a song you can put it in an envelope and mail it to yourself. Then down the line if anyone ever steals one of your tunes you can get out the sealed envelope, show the judge the postmark, open the package and play the recording of the tune in question. It's just like mailing yourself a receipt - proof of ownership. I applied that to a scenario where you mail a letter to yourself that tells your significant other how much she pisses you off. Then years later if you break up you can get out the envelope and prove how long you have been sick of her shitty attitude.

Of course, you could always just communicate your feelings maturely, but people who handle things that way don't write good songs.

   - Bret Alexander

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