It featured a musical collaboration between Henry and guitarist Page Hamilton of alternative metal band Helmet and included a cover version of "Let Me Have It All" from Sly and the Family Stone's 1973 Fresh album.

Interviewed on the Sessions at West 54th TV show in 1998, Henry said when he began making Trampoline, he was determined to learn a new way to work.

"[10] Henry said producer Patrick McCarthy, who had worked with U2 and Robbie Robertson, helped reshape his approach to songwriting and production.

"The turning point was in taking a bit of my recording budget and setting up a studio in my garage, allowing me to work whenever I wanted, piece by piece; allowing me to write to new rhythms, record to loops, play bass, and steal like a thief with my sampler.

I was free from the role of Boy Scout Leader, which is how I always felt trying to lead six or more players in the studio during 'live' sessions.

And as I learned all this, I made a record called Trampoline, which again, felt like starting over from scratch.

"[11] Henry said it was widely, though wrongly, assumed that "Ohio Air Show Plane Crash"—a love song written around an aircraft crash—was inspired by a real event.

I can't tell you how many people, when I did an interview, asked me if I had, since the last record, survived or witnessed a terrible crash ...

I think I was stuck on another song that wouldn't be beat into submission and to try and get away from it I just recorded a drum machine part and a bass and a vocal.

As luck would have it, my friend Page Hamilton happened to be in Los Angeles recording for a soundtrack and I invited him over one evening to play guitar on it, purely for sport, and only much later did I think of it as a piece of the puzzle, that I recognized that it lyrically and sonically fit with the record.

I just assumed it was a catalyst for Page and me starting to work together and I brought him back to do a few more days of recording.

He started with a Vari-Speed drum loop which sounded like an army marching and the pump organ and my vocal only.