Limited-Edition "SURPRISE" colored vinyl (one of four variants). It was a difficult time for me when I started working on this album. I had just uprooted myself from the city apartment building where I'd been living for twenty years to a house in a more rural town two hours away where I knew no one when one of my best friends died ("Ashes"), and then my dog died ("Constant Companion"), then my mother was diagnosed with esophagus cancer ("Scratchers"). I was pretty depressed for a solid year ("Long Slow Nervous Breakdown") and lost and very lonely ("Harmonizing With Myself"). I was thinking about fate and circumstance and about how I'd ended up where I was ("Where Are You Now").
However much or hard I try, it seems, I've never had much control over much in my life. I should say here that my mother's younger brother was struck and killed by lighting at the age of 16 and when I asked her how this affected her worldview, she told me that it made her believe that there is a predetermined plan for each of us. With this album I was contemplating these ideas-fate, powerlessness ("Popsicle"), the effects of trauma ("Wouldn't Change Anything," "Fall Apart"," Strong Too Long"), the ways we can't and don't change. I hold on to humility and gratitude (most of the time) rather than (constant) bitterness, and I have hope, mostly in the form of the music that I make, even if it's subject matter is sometimes kind of grim. This practice of putting songs together has always sustained me and given my life-as uncontrollable as it feels- meaning and purpose, even in the darkest times. "Lighting Might Strike" is largely about that; the music itself is pulling me out of a big hole ("All I've Got") in real time, in the time it took me to make the album. Chris Anzalone played and recorded all the drums from Arlington, Massachusetts. Ed Valauskas played and recorded most of the bass from Cambridge, MA. I did the bass on a few songs, plus all the guitars, keyboards, vocals, and percussion, in my house ("My House Is Not My Dream House") in western MA. The talented Pat DiCenso then mixed and mastered it all. The whole thing took about two years-broken up in pieces and chunks (I went on tour for six weeks last autumn, etc.) - to complete. -Juliana Hatfield