I was living in Chicago with a theater troupe I’d formed around a rock and roll opera I’d written that was running there. The set designers were two amazing painters who’d met in art school. Our sets were their murals, which would envelope the whole theater wherever we ran. For my shows, Maura would paint in Adair’s style, like an apprentice, though she is a powerful artist in her own right. It seemed to me a loving gesture, subsuming her talent. One night after a party on the roof of our hotel, Maura disappeared with the play’s lead actor, and that sent a ripple through our group. If they got together, I don’t think it lasted very long. A few days after that Maura said to me - a propos of nothing - that she noticed there’d never been a song written about a girl named Maura. We joked that it was probably because nothing rhymes with Maura. Song For A Friend was a simple gift for her. After Chicago I did something stupid and fell out with a girl in our troupe who happened to be close to Maura, and so Maura and I lost touch. Many years later, while planning this record, I was listening through old material and I took a break to get the mail. When I opened my front door I saw Maura standing on the street in front of my house, walking her dog Penny. It turned out she’d been living with her love only two blocks from me in my new city, now hers. It was wonderful to see Maura and while we were catching up I thought “Oh, ‘Song For a Friend.’ The record could really use a song like that.”