She Brings The Rain

Album: Lessons Learned (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • Robert De Leo has a chronic musical instrument habit, buying lots of vintage guitars and anything else he might want to play. This song came about when he was looking for a "couch guitar" to add to his collection at the Folk Music Center in Claremont, California.

    "I went out there knowing they have a lot of acoustic instruments," he told Songfacts. "One day I acquired a guitarrón, which is usually a six-string and unfretted. I found one that was converted to four strings and fretted, and it's a beautiful-sounding instrument. I also acquired this little three-quarter scale, old 1950s nylon-string guitar – it doesn't even have a name on it. I always wanted one, and that became my couch guitar."

    When he played the guitar, the song came to him.

    "I was sitting here in the rain, and I had the door open. Where I live, I have wild peacocks that roam this area. I was sitting here all alone, and one of these peacocks came up and sat right at my doorstep and was keeping me company. It knew I was in a sentimental, somber mood. I wrote that song that day with that peacock at my doorstep."
  • The song is from Lessons Learned, De Leo's first solo album. Much of it deals with heartbreak and has a folk-country feel - a far cry from the music he makes as bass player for Stone Temple Pilots.

    "I always love the lyrics of old country songs, and how smart and wise and catchy they were," he added to Songfacts. "I was trying to liken someone coming to visit, and when they do it's always raining. That's very odd for Southern California. It's trying to figure out whether that rain is a good thing or whether it's a bad thing. But I took it from the standpoint of when love comes, it starts raining, so it can be taken both ways, good or bad. Water brings life, or you just get rained on."
  • De Leo played most of the instruments on the Lessons Learned album but used an assortment of vocalists. "She Brings The Rain" is sung by Tim Bluhm of The Mother Hips.

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