Truth be told it wasn’t “my” dog actually. It was my former partner Katie Shaw’s dog. I met Mia the Black Akita first in Chillicothe, Ohio when Katie was living there. Mia pulled hard on her walks and was pretty much a beast who, if you were a burglar wanting to rob a house and saw her face through the window, you’d probably skip that house. She was super loyal and fun and eventually met her match out in the High Desert of Joshua Tree. This was just a tune I wrote one day while she was stumbling around in the heat, trying to get comfortable. There seems to be a close kinship with “Norwegian Wood,” a Lennon tune that has inspired quite a few of my songs in the Drop D tuning and position. Since that time in the High Desert, Katie has gotten another Akita called “Joni.” It’s just a favorite breed of hers and now mine after being in such proximity to these bear hunters.
In other irony, I just went to Japan and enjoyed some bear curry while up at a mountain lodge. I did not expect that to be on the bingo card for the day, but the Tautasha Lodge owner (up in the mountains outside of Kyoto) hunted and grew all the food we ate. I sing this song often, and it has most definitely grown since the day I recorded it with Marc Howard in the studio cabin at Victoria Williams’s place in Joshua Tree. I used it to kick off the Ammunition album, and it set the mood, with the great Don Heffington on drums.
Here’s the album version from 2006
Here’s the full album as it was re-recorded in a hotel room in Appleton, Wisconsin in 2026.
