Leaving Me Lonely

From She Disowned My Life to Leaving Me Lonely; by the late fall of ’96, I had broken up with Jennifer Strawser and was seeing a theater major named Carrie Thomas in State College. I was also listening to a lot of early Neil Young, particularly his first solo album. I found myself amused by the parallel to Neil: writing songs for an actress named Carrie (Neil briefly married actress Carrie Snodgrass in the early 70s). So, it came into my head to write a Neil pastiche about what my time with Carrie was like. Leaving Me Lonely is, in fact, a pastiche of I’ve Been Waiting For You and What Did You Do To My Life from the aforementioned first Neil solo album. If it didn’t come up to be recorded in the late Nineties or Aughts, it is semi by accident and semi because I couldn’t find a meaningful place for it on any of my records.