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Here's the full version of what I sent to the folks at Metroland for the discussion of lyrics in the 2006 Local Music Issue - featuring the responses of Sara Ayers, Brian Bassett, John Brodeur, Stephen Gaylord, Erin Harkes, Meg Hutchinson and Gaven Richard. The stuff that wound up on the cutting room floor is in red. - BT.

2. Do you wait for "the muse" or follow a disciplined writing schedule, or somewhere in between?

Sometimes there's a challenge - my brother needs a song for a short film, for instance - and I like the idea of pulling together something I never would have written otherwise. But I can't force it on my own. So 99 percent of the time, I just have to wait for it to hit me. Every song feels like it's going to be the very last.

3. Which comes first, the lyrics or the music?

First, I'll make a mistake on guitar. If the mistake sounds interesting enough, I'll chant a melody on top of it, something I could hum or whistle on its own and it would still make sense as a melody. Then I'll free-associate some nonsense words. From the nonsense comes the lyrics. I wish I was kidding.

4. Do you worry about clichés? How do you avoid them?

It's a fine line between universal and same old, same old. I'll do anything to avoid a cliché, whether it's a lyric on the micro level or a sentiment on the macro level. Universality, however, is the first casualty. And I've got the (lack of) album sales to prove it.

7. Are you more Randy Newman (narratives from the perspective of other people) or Joni Mitchell (first person/confessional), early Michael Stipe (words as sounds, not stories) or something else entirely?

I guess I come from more of the Joni school. But Joni knows that it's not enough just to feel it, because it's so easy to fall into the trap of bringing just one more navel-gazing-woe-is-me song into the world. (Who was it that said the worst poets mean it the most?) So I try to go so deep inside myself that I come out the other end. So to speak. Then I can write from a safe distance, so that it sounds more like a Newman-school song - or at least it feels that way to me while I'm singing it. More confrontational than confessional. A la Richard Pryor. Sprinkle some Newmanesque dark, bitter, old-school irony and humor, a dash of Stipean/Dylanesque word-painting for further subterfuge, and a splash of Princely nobody-else-would-say-or-do-that, and ya got yourself a Bryan Thomas song. For better or for worse. The rough, real-life metaphor for this: instead of getting a model to pose as the "Jennifer" character on the cover of my last three records, I put on the short skirt and pumps and posed myself. Yet of the six or seven people who actually purchased those records, most don't know that the hot mama with the big behind is really me. (Um, until now.)

8. Topical or timeless?

Even as my songs have become more quasi-political in recent years, it's hard for me to point the finger accusingly at others in the lyrics. My hand knows me too well, so it tends to turn around and flip me the bird. I touch on topical issues of the day - the nonsense coming out of the White House lately, for instance - by visiting the larger, historical context of American hypocrisies, which, if done right, should be not only timeless but also apolitical. And inclusive of my own human failings, too. With that said: on the last record, sure, I did a little topical finger pointing on a song or two. Some American hypocrisies are more hypocritical than others.

9. Is rhyming important?

For a certain type of song, sure. But the, um, African-American in me feels like rhythm is just as important, if not more. There's just too many ways you can invert or re-word a phrase or tweak the melody itself for a songwriter to have to force a syllable to the point where it sounds unnatural. At least not without a sense of irony.

10. Are lyrics poetry?

Poetic, if not poetry. I don't pretend that my lyric writing can really compare to the art and craft of pure poetry. There are other songwriters and rappers out there making what I consider to be poetry, but I don't think I'm coming at it that way. Still, if I do it right, the lyrics should at least be able to stand on their own. The music, too. The whole is usually greater than the sum of the parts, I suppose, but each should be able to stand on its own.

And here's the questions I didn't respond to.

Don't read too much into that.

1. Where do you write lyrics?

6. Do you every worry that your lyrics sound like someone else?

11. What is it like to write lyrics-fun? Painful? Cathartic? Etc.

12. All-time favorite lyricist?

13. All-time favorite lyric?

14. Favorite lyric of your own?

15. Anything else you'd like to say about writing lyrics?