Songfacts®:

• Black Roses was the first release from the Chicago band Painkiller Hotel. Their lead singer and primary songwriter Kevin Presbrey told us: "'Voice In My head,' 'All I Ever Wanted,' and 'So Far Away' are three songs that really stick out to me from Black Roses. Lyrically, each was inspired by the different things that were going on my life at the time... good, bad, & ugly! Puppy love and that transition from being a kid to being an adult played a big role in the writing. Past romances seem to be the theme behind these songs, and I guess these songs were a venting mechanism for me in a way. There were really no stories that specifically inspired the songs, although I did write 'So Far Away' while I was on a fishing trip in November in Ontario, snowed into a cabin by the lake. Recording wise, they were all recorded in the traditional way. Pre-production, tracking, guitars, vox, etc. Putting this album together was kind of like releasing a chapter of my life to the world."
• Describing his songwriting process, Presbrey says: "I don't know if this is the conventional way to write songs, but it seems to work for me. Ninety-five percent of the time I start with the music first and come up with a theme/vibe for the song. From there, I tend to start humming melodies over the chords, and eventually replace those melodies with words that fit with the theme of the song. I've tried other methods, but almost always I come back to writing the music first on an acoustic guitar or piano and then writing the words. The words always seem to come out of my subconscious, and always pertain to my inner thoughts at the time or things that I'm dealing with and have a hard time talking about out loud." (Check out Painkiller Hotel at their MySpace site.)