To Be Free: Song To You

So if, "Come On" was the beginning of the mini-rock opera, this was the closer.  This was also the only song that Dan Patterson ever played outside of Undulata.  Somewhere there is a recording of Dan and I playing this with our first attempt at a band- The Confused (a rare instance in truth in advertising). In the earliest recording, I played the lead guitar in the recording (albeit, with less finesse).

 If you listen closely, you can really hear the campfire on this one.  The song was our good night song for the rest of the summer.  I resurrected the song years later when I became a father.  It's a nice lullaby.  It's fitting that it ends the album.

                          Song to You

This is my song to you,

This is what I'll do for you,

I hope you like it when it's through.

Some people call it a sad song,

But don't get me wrong,

Just close your eyes and it won't be long.

This is your song from me,

I've tried my best to set you free,

Now you must be what you are going to be.

The stars are moving rapidly,

You are you and I am me,

I hope that you have learned to see.

To Be Free: With the Wind

            I'm going to tell you a few things about this song.  The first is about the writing, and the second is about the recording. Here's the version on Spotify.

The Writing

            Freshman year in high-school was an opportunity to remake myself.  I remember the weekend before school started I had finally succumbed to Bob Dylan.  It was the song "Tangled Up in Blue" and though I had no idea what Dylan was doing I finally learned to take it in.  My brother had been listening to Dylan for a couple of years and I thought he was the funniest sounding thing I had ever heard.  It was a far cry from the perfect harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel.  But succumb, I did and a mix tape that I had made became the soundtrack to my first day of high-school.

Nobody really knew me and I could decide who it was that they would see.  And I took full advantage of this.  I had the advantage of nothing to lose.  I also started classes at an after-school theatre company called Walden Theatre. It was here that I met many of my life-long friends.  Walden put on about four productions a year and held classes for movement, improvisation and playwriting.  My brother and sister had both participated in this program and I was always jealous. 

            My involvement in this program started gradually.  For the first half of my freshman year I only participated on weekends.  This left me free during the week and so I spent a lot of time practicing piano and guitar as well as writing songs.  Having written "To Be Free", I knew that I had the ability to write a good song, but to tell you the truth, I wasn't exactly sure how I did it.  So there was a lot of trial and error.  I would like to think that every song I wrote has some spark of interest in it, I would only venture forth with a precious few.  

            I also was writing stories, poems and I was working on a full-length play.  In retrospect, I see that what I was doing was learning how to write by making every mistake very quickly, but I am glad I did not see it as that at the time, because I know that I would only have been discouraged.  I wanted to believe that everything that I was writing was brilliant.

            I had a very close friend named Dan, whom I had known since I was four and whom I used to pal around with all the time growing up.  He had moved away but was still living in Louisville, but because we were too young to do anything about it, we didn't see each other.  Well, he went to Ballard High with me and we became friends again.  That Christmas, his parents gave him a guitar and he was playing the rudiments quite comfortably by the end of the year. He had soul and the fact that he was such a good friend made playing music that much better. Plus, I got him into Dylan.

            Bob Dylan was a revelation to me.  Like the Monkees, listening to Bob Dylan felt like a secret no one else knew about.  I dressed up as Dylan for Spirit Week.  The more I listened to his music, the more I was in awe. I had written some good songs, I thought, but nothing like Bob Dylan.  How did he do it? Getting two lines to rhyme seemed impossible at times, and Dylan would tell impressionistic stories while weaving words together in all sorts of unusual ways.  

            By the Spring of my freshman year, I had written a long epic poem called, “The Road.”  I showed it to my friend Dan, and he was very impressed.  He liked my songs, and I remember trying to teach him “What we Both Know,” but he had never seemed all that impressed with any of my songs.  I had played them for Eric, and I had gotten a similar reaction. But Dan liked my epic poem, and I showed it to some other kids, and they liked it too. It made me feel like I could be a writer.

            That Spring break, I visited my brother and my sister at Yale.  It had made a real impression on me.  There was something about New England that made an impression on me. Perhaps it was the line in “Tangle Up in Blue” where Dylan sings about heading to the east coast that made me think that this was a place that I belonged.  There was something transformational about the area for me.   

            One day, I was in rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing.I was talking to my friend Gabe (a fellow actor), and we talked about writing a song together. It was a very creative place. In the play, I was a musician, and so I got to bring my guitar to rehearsals all the time.  I remember trying to write a song that began, “I’m a traveling man, that’s what they call me/I don’t stay in one place, but I stay happy.”  My friend Amy got a good chuckle out of that line.  Probably because I didn’t really fit the persona I was trying to create.  I was trying to find another line to the song, but I couldn’t find one.  Probably because it sucked, but I didn’t know that yet.  I started talking to Gabe about a good story for a song, and we came up with the idea of a guy who falls in love with a girl who kills herself. 

I said I would start the song, and he could finish it, but I ended up writing the whole song in about an hour when I got home that night.  When I saw him next he didn’t seem to mind.  Here’s what I wrote:

Oh, what a summer,

Oh, what a season of wonder,

Saw the light felt the thunder,

Oh, just like the wind.

We all drove to New England

The way up we were all singin'

Road down my ears were just ringin'

Things change with the wind.

When I saw her face my heart stood still

She said that her life had been unfulfilled

And that every flower made will always be killed

Seasons change and move with the wind.

You can run so far and run so fast

You can do what you want but it won't ever last

You run from yourself and you run from the past

But you know things change with the wind.

She asked me what was the point of it all

"We were made to stand up only to fall,"

I said, "You've got to teach yourself to stand tall,"

You gotta teach yourself to stand with the wind.

The next part was just like a dream

I don’t remember much, I remember the scream

She told me that things they aren't what they seem

The illusions fade with the wind.

Oh, what a summer, 

Oh, what a season of wonder

Saw the light felt the thunder

Oh, with the wind

The wind dies down and the wind grows strong

She knew just what she was doing all along

Her voice sounds out like the song

The times will change with the wind.

            Unlike the other songs that I had been struggling with throughout this period, this one came easily.  I wrote it in one sitting.  I could pick out details and say where they came from.  For example, when I was talking about New England, I was picturing New Haven where my sister and brother where in school. And the woman in the song has a tragic quality that I associated with this girl at Walden.  But  I wasn't really trying to make any kind of statement or anything.  I know that it was heavily influenced by Dylan. Unlike most pop songs it has a folk structure.   

The Recording

When I started playing this song in front of other people, it was as close as I could get to a "hit".  People really liked the song, which was really weird, because it's not a pop-song, and wasn't intended to be.  When I finally got around to recording it (13 years after I wrote it), I recorded it for Lost and Found. That's a great album, and you can find it on Spotify, iTunes, etc.  Check it out. We went over every song on that album with a fine-toothed comb.

For a while I thought about putting out that same version on this album.  But I couldn't do it.  I wasn't ready to recycle material for a new album.  This is not a greatest hits, or anything where you expect to hear the same material.  So I decided to re-record it.  At first, it was just going to be me and my acoustic guitar, but I love to tinker in the studio.  Hopefully it's not overdone.  That was not the intention.  The intention was to make a camp-fire version of the song.  Enjoy!

To Be Free: Questions of the Heart

The key (for me) to writing a good song is that it must be true.  It doesn't have to be literally true.  For me, it was often the feelings that were true.  I mention this, because this song has pop song content- love, right?  But it is in a folk song structure- AAAA.  There's no chorus here.  That usually tells me that I wrote this, because I had to.

Is it rain falling or tears?
Is it thunder or your fears?
Is that smile a hiding place
To hide your soul from your face?
Got your back against a wall?
I'll be there through anything at all.

Tell me where does the time go?
Oh, will we ever know?
And it seems like I've been here before,
And I know that I'll be here some more,
I know my wish won't ever come true
But that's all I'm left to do.

I've been lost so many years
The answer's never been quite clear
I've been lost without a sign
Someday I'm gonna make you mine.

It it rain falling or tears?
Is it thunder or your fears?
It's been so long that I can't tell
Oh, I guess it's just as well.

This song is interesting to me, because I tried to cultivate the persona of someone who knew some things.  I used to like to think that I was pretty smart.  But it was a persona.  I wrote this, because of my crush that I couldn't do anything about.  I was too scared.  Nothing made me more nervous than feeling something for someone else.  I was a late bloomer, so I didn't have any experience with how to talk to girls.  In my mind, I had this idea that they would somehow find me. And yet, I knew that would never happen.  So I simply carried this weight around with me, and the song ends on a note of resignation.

When I produced this song, I wanted to capture that feeling of a crush.  The song soars to a climax in the third stanza.  That's the moment where you imagine the possibilities.  There's a person, and they're so close. You see them every day, and yet with one touch you enter a whole new world.  But the song doesn't ever get there.  It's just a promise, and the promise falls short.

On a side note, there is a through-line in these songs.  A side plot of sorts.  There's something about the rain that captivated me.  In fact, when I think back to when I was writing these songs, I wanted to call my first album Something About the Rain. I still think it's a great title. I just didn't have any pictures that fit.

To Be Free: Smile on Me

A few years ago I discovered that I was an HSP.  That stands for a Highly Sensitive Person.  It's a thing, honest.  About 15% of the population are on the spectrum.  A sensitive is someone for whom normal sensory input is amplified.  On the plus side, they can be particularly responsive to art, and music.  On the other hand, they can be overwhelmed easily.  A crowded room, a particularly shrill person, even bad lighting can disturb a sensitive.  I used to get head-aches all the time, but I never new why.  In hind-sight I see that it was because I had maxed out on sensory input for the day.

I couldn't tell you exactly why I wrote "Smile on Me."  I imagine it has something to do with HSP. Sensitives aren't just sensitive to their own emotions.  They can feel other people's emotions. I was easily influenced by other people's emotions.  High school was a departure from a sadness that haunted me in middle school.  I felt a kind of liberation.  I was finally someone that mattered.  I don't know why I felt that then, and not before, but I did.  But it seemed like some people were just so depressed about everything.  It bothered me.  Some days more than others.\

Smile on Me

How come nobody ever smiles any more

Smile to light up your face

How come no one even tries any more

Tries to make sense of this place,

It's this life-long journey that seems surreal

Nobody seems to know the rules

That ones who stand and the ones who feel

Are the people we label as fools

You can't be trapped by what’s on top,

There are better things buried inside,

You have to swim below the surface,

And pull it open wide.

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Can't you see?

That's what I really need.

How close can I get?

Before you turn away,

I can't stand a mouthful of regret,

So I guess I'll make my mistakes today,

I remember when I didn't look,

I always knew myself for sure,

But then I felt that desperate stare,

I never could endure.

I've been running- is it to or from?

I know I've been running so far,

You have to run to the ends of the earth,

To find your shining star

How come you don't smile anymore?

Was it that hard?

How come you don't try anymore?

It just tears me apart,

Cut off just to see your face,

Surrounded by these walls,

In a lost and lonely place,

In long and empty halls

I want to be the one that finds you,

And I hope that you find me,

I'm looking for that distant shore,

To set our spirits free

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Can't you see?

We need to set each other free.

To Be Free: To Be Free (The Song)

So I decided to write a little something about the songs on my new album: Volume 1: To Be Free.  I decided to go in chronological order- which is not the order of the actual album.  "To Be Free" is not the first song that I wrote, but it's the first song that I kept.  You can listen to the song here.

           I could tell you a lot about my childhood. And some of it would be pertinent. But there's a line drawn in my memory and when I cross it I lose a sense of certainty regarding my own history. For example, in my family it is common knowledge that I fell out of my second story bedroom window when I was about two.  I landed in some bushes.  I don't remember this incident at all.  But because I've heard the story so many times, I can visualize it perfectly. So someday, I imagine, I will tell people this story and I will remember it- though, all I am remembering is the visualization. 

            That being said I'll start in the middle because the search for the beginning can be maddening.  Every time I think I have found the beginning I look back and realize that in fact there is an event that precedes it that could very well be considered the beginning were it not for the fact that there is yet another event that could very well be looked upon as the beginning.  So to avoid all this nonsense, I start in the middle- which is where we all start. 

            The earliest songwriting memory I have is of me singing and crying to myself.  I think I was six years old.  My best friend had moved away, and I had never felt so sad.  I wanted to sing a song that expressed my sadness, but there wasn’t one.  So I just sang what I was thinking as I cried.  I don’t know if I ever did that again, but I still remember that moment.  

            I was in my brother’s room- which is where I would go to listen to music.  He had a turntable, and I would play his records.  I mostly listened to The Beatles’ Revolver, Lou Reed’s Transformer, and occasionally I would listen to The Police and The Cars. I think I would spend an hour every day, when I was young doing that.  I liked to sing, but I couldn’t really play an instrument yet. 

            Years later, I was sitting a the neighborhood pool after swim practice, and I began making up a silly song.  I remember being impressed with myself, though not impressed enough to actually write any of it down. I still didn’t have any idea that people wrote songs.  By now I could play a little piano, but I wasn’t very good.  I did try making up a song, and I played it in the third grade in music class, but my best friend at the time thought I had stolen someone else’s song.  I didn’t think I had, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.  

            I was about twelve years old when I had written my first song.  I couldn't tell you the name of it, but I still remember the melody.  I played it for the talent show at my school in seventh grade and people were impressed.  Not because the song was any good (it wasn't) but because I was not even thirteen and writing songs.  I had played with melodies for years, but I hadn't taken pen to paper until now.  

            I played the song to an amphitheatre of people, and I didn't have a microphone, so no one could hear me.  So really, no one could tell how bad the song was, fortunately.  So I escaped with my credibility in tact.  I didn't play the song much after that, choosing instead to entertain people with other peoples songs- mainly "Let it Be" by the Beatles and "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees.  

            The performance took place at the end of the school-year and it wasn't long before I was off to camp Hayo-Went-Ha for the summer.  Camp was always a good time for me and it influenced my music considerably.  It was an all-boys camp and a lot of the counselors were life-long hippies and they all played guitar.  They would play "I know you Rider" by the Grateful Dead and "Four Strong Winds" by Neil Young and Cat Stevens and Woody Guthrie like it was going out of style.  

            There was something about the woods in Michigan that reminded me of some paradise lost.  Something about the tall pines and the cool summer nights that made me feel like I had escaped into some parallel universe where God was watching all the time.  It was here that I remember sneaking off to the Bombright Lodge where I could find a piano and would play in the middle of the day after rest-period until Dinner.  There was something about the quiet there.  My chords would resonate into that quiet. 

            I always loved to go to camp.  It was here that I was looked upon by my peers as someone worth knowing. Someone cool.  Except that cool ceased to exist in the woods.  It was more a sense of trust.  There was a degree of trust among us and even if somebody was picked on for whatever reason, there was a line drawn in each of our minds that we did not cross.  

            We would go on trips down the Two Hearted River and to Pictured Rocks and I learned to sail, and I would get up and jump into the cold waters for the polar bear club.  That summer I took an astronomy class.  I remember spending one night on the docks and looking up at the stars as our counselor (who was an astronomy major at college) would point out all the constellations.  And he would talk about physics, which we only superficially understood. There was something about that place that for all my years of schooling taught me what it meant to be human being- and not one that separates itself from the natural world, but one that is a part of this amazing web.

            The camp was a YMCA camp- and we would have church in an outdoor chapel listening to the waves crash against the shore. We weren't allowed to talk the entire hike out to the point.  And so we arrived at this chapel with quiet open spirits.  The sermons were never all that Christian. More often than not, they were stories about lessons learned in the wilderness or about the importance of being able to count on a friend.  And church just seemed an extension of the daily ritual wherein each counselor would take his turn giving a thought for the day.  

            So as the Summer came to a close, I found myself heading back to Louisville very much at peace.  This was a good thing, because school was such a difficult place for me.  I seemed to do okay academically, but I was getting into trouble a lot and really didn't feel any kind of acceptance among my peers.  My close friend, Eric, was my saving grace.  We would get together just about every weekend.  Often times we would spend our time at my house eating pizza and listening to Simon & Garfunkel. My friend Kevin Lott would come by, and we would chill and talk about life.  

            For some reason, I had a habit of being out of control in large groups, so intimate settings were very good for me. But still I always longed to "fit in".  I could come up with a dozen reasons as to why I didn't.  Perhaps it was because I came into this particular school late.  Everyone had already started to get to know each other, when I came.  Or perhaps it was that every close friend I had had up until I was about 12 had moved away.  Or perhaps it was that I was the youngest by five years in my family and I always had a sense of being left out for "adult activities". Who knows? But I always had a sense of not fitting in coupled with a strong desire to fit in. 

            I took piano lessons, but I didn't really enjoy them.  I would sit and stare at my piano book and just not practice what I was supposed to practice.  I preferred to tinker on the piano. I wrote songs gradually.  I would just keep trying different things until I found something that worked.  I don't know how else to do it.  But the more I did it, the more I had to do it.  Oddly enough, I did learn some music theory, but it was entirely by accident.  

            I didn't worry too much about words. Words, were just sounds for me at that point.  I was really into the music more than anything.  And I wrote many instrumental pieces without any words.  I liked to sing.  In fact, I was pretty good.  I sang in the choir at church and we did a Benjamin Britten piece at church called, "Noyye's Fludde," where I was a main character, and had some solo parts to sing.  I had a lot more confidence at that point of singing other people's stuff at that point than my own.  In retrospect, I see it was for good reason.

            The choirmaster, Mr. Rightmeyer, was a fun guy to work with.  I don't think I remember him getting angry or yelling at anyone.  And everyone who stayed in the choir, did so because of him, I'm certain.  He had a way of getting us to learn the songs that was not forceful.  We would work on a bunch of songs at rehearsal, rather than working on the song we would sing at the offertory the upcoming Sunday.  This was a fabulous way to work, because we would gradually learn a song over a six week period. Also, I got along with the people in choir.  Something about coming together to sing that makes people more open-minded.  We all made bad noises from time to time, but we trusted each other because we saw that trust pay off time and time again.

            My eighth grade year was problematical. My brother had gone off to college and I was alone in the house with the parents.  But more often than not, I was alone.  I didn't have a ton of friends in the neighborhood, and so I spent a lot time playing by myself.  This was actually a good thing, because growing up their was never a dull moment in my house.  With my time to my self, I spent a lot of time going on wild flights of fancy. And I felt very comfortable with who I was. But then I would return to school and feel like a complete dork.

            Eric, my best-friend, was also a dork. But he was kind of cool, in a way I would never be.  We got along very well and we used to go on wild flights of fancy together and talk comic books and make videos and what not.  Eric had a great sense of humor, though he reserved it for special occasions.  Me, I joked all the time, which meant that I missed as much as I hit. When we hung together I felt like I was an okay guy.  It wasn't all that different from when I was by myself.  Eric liked me the way I was.  And I liked him too.

            I think the only time I felt comfortable in front of people, was when I was singing a song.  I was good at it.  And so I found myself spending a lot of time in front of people behind a piano.  I built a steady repertoire of songs I learned by ear.  Reading sheet music was a slow process for me, so I would play by trial and error.  Sooner or later I'd get it. And if I didn't, I would learn another song.  I was a big Monkee's fan, so I learned a lot of those songs, and it branded me a dork by many. 

            I read comic books voraciously.  Eric turned me on them.  I actually wanted to be a super-hero, but I lacked their courage.  Plus, I could never beat someone up.  In every fight I had been in, I got my ass kicked.  But that didn't stop my imagination.  Comics were great fuel for my imagination. And I would write my own and come up with my own super-heroes.  In addition to comics, I was deep into occult stuff. I had a tarot deck and I read about psychics and E.S.P. and ghosts and all things out of the ordinary.  I read dream dictionaries and was interested in the hidden world.  The invisible world.

            All this actually made me cool at times. I can remember the few instances when I wasn't playing piano, and my peers listened to me like I had something important to say was when I was talking about all this occult phenomena. Actually, I discovered that a lot of the kids at school thought about these weird things.  I just would get the ball rolling.  And when we talk about ghosts and strange phenomenon, all of a sudden I wasn't a dork.  People listened to me.

            That seems to be a recurring theme. Listening.  Being the youngest in a five person nuclear family meant that I got told a lot.  I sat and listened to a lot.  And I overheard so many things in that house.  But it was rare that I got an opportunity to talk.  My brother and sister were so much older than I was and prone to arguing with each other, and my mother and father would argue too. Don't get me wrong- I don't know if we were unusually argumentative or not.  But the arguments were more interesting.  So I paid more attention.  The other "adult-type" discussions, were not really of interest to me, or were not intended to include me.  But I found clever ways of getting attention.  I was often the comedian of the family.  I would say something really outrageous and people would laugh and listen for a moment.  

            My parents tried to get me into soccer, but it was not my element.  I just wasn’t very aggressive on the field.  I preferred working on the plays we put on.  Yup.  Put me on stage and everything will be just fine.  I was a bit of a ham, truth be told. But again, I liked the notion of working in groups to create something.  There was a great deal of trust when you act with people on stage.  One person screws up, it's up to everyone else to get the play on track.  So being in plays wasn't just about being on stage. Though, that was a great part of it.  

            I used to get head-aches a lot. Actually, a whole lot.  I was taken to the doctor's and they couldn't find anything wrong with me.  Just tension head-aches, they said.  Great. Never knew how to get rid of them.  But when they'd come on, I'd be out of commission. Maybe it was the tension of being a dork.  Or maybe I was just hypersensitive.  I certainly was a bit high-strung.  I mean, sometimes the littlest thing would set me to crying.  I was a cry-baby.  And I was embarrassed because of that.

            I tried to write more songs, but I could never figure out how to do it.  I wrote poems pretty easily, but songs were more structured.  I couldn't just be creative.  Eric and I worked on a song together for the talent show.  Eric was playing bass now and we got up and performed something that can only be thought of as really weird.  I still have no idea what we were thinking.  Nobody liked it, but we didn't care.  We were wrapping things up in our little school. School was coming to and end we both were looking at high-school next year.  

            The song was called, “Crazy.”  I remember the line, “Crazy is just a state of mind,” but not much else.  Everyone asked why I had ripped off Pink Floyd.  I didn’t listen to Pink Floyd, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t heard their song.  It had never occurred to me that I could unconsciously plagiarize anything. But I was still trying to write songs the right way, and not my way.  

            Here things get fuzzy.  I know that it was around this time that I wrote the song "To Be Free". I'll throw the lyrics out at you and we can break off into discussion groups in a second.

            Everybody listen to me

            I've got words to set you free

            It's nothin' nothin' at all

            You can go hide or you can stand tall

            But you need to be freee like the eagle in the sky

            Who never wonders why can't I find my state of mind.

            Oh, tell me why.

            

            You are you and must be that

            But I am none the worse for that

            Seeing only with eyes blinds us

            Hearing only with ears deafens us

            And feeling with our fingertips

            And not our hearts tears us apart.

            You need to be free like the eagle in the sky

            Who never wonders why can't I find my state of mind.

            Oh, tell me why.

            Sooner or later this and that creaps back to the hole from which it came

            Not being known to man- better off all the same

            Everybody's worried, worried 'bout paying the price

            But a wise man once said, "God doesn't play with dice."

            And you need to be free like the eagle in the sky

            Who never wonders why can't I find my state of mind

            Oh, tell me why.

            Yeah, that was my statement to the world. And I was saying don't get caught up in petty things, I guess.  Don't judge someone for what they wear- as I had been judged.  Be yourself- advice I didn't always take, but when I did, I found I was all-right.  And finally in the last verse, a belief that all things come to and end, but regardless there is a purpose. We may never know what it is, but there is a reason and it's no accident that the world exists.  Not bad for a fourteen year old.  Looking back at the lyrics, I see that the song is colored by a peace found in the woods of Michigan, where I was allowed to be myself and I learned how to function in a group.  A place in nature where the goal is not to learn how to read and write, but how to relate and show respect.  Where the rituals are founded in a deep spiritual understanding of the union of man and nature.

            I did it.  I wrote a song that wasn't bad.  I didn't play it for anyone right away, but I knew deep inside, that I had done it and that was the greatest reward.  I'm sure I was still basking in the glow of this as I packed my suitcase for camp, for my final foray into the wilderness before returning home to take on the fresh wilderness of High School.  And this time I had a little something special to take with me.  

            See, Eric had a habit of leaving things at my house.  We used to joke that he didn't need to bring a change of clothes when he spent the night, because he'd probably left a whole outfit somewhere.  We found this to be one of Eric's endearing eccentricities. This time, he left me something special- intended or not, he said I could hold onto it for the summer. It was a Harmony Acoustic Guitar.

To Be Free: Introduction

            Time is a curious thing.  We can exist within it, and we can occasionally step outside of it.  How I am able to write these words is a marvel to me, because I am very much within time.  But the “what” of what I am writing is a product of being outside of time. This makes total sense to me, but as I write the words, I am struck at how peculiarly it must come across.

            This project is an effort on my part to present my music, and I imagine that my choices must seem very bizarre. For one thing, I am starting at the beginning, or close to it.  Having written songs for over thirty years, you would think that my most recent work would be the place to start, and I hope to share that with you as well, but instead I am starting with the songs that I began writing when I was 14. However, I need to explain what I’m trying to do here, if it is to make any sense at all. 

            As I began working on this project, I thought to myself that this album was over thirty years in the making.  It seemed like I might use that line to market the work, but as I began to reflect on that idea, I began to realize that maybe this was the only way it was ever supposed to happen.  See, I never left this music behind, and I think for many years I wasn’t sure why.

            So why now?  Part of the answer is purely pragmatic.  I have a studio which allows me the opportunity to do so, but the window is closing.  The digital technology which makes it possible will be obsolete, and I am racing against time.  If not now, I never will.  I have a sincere hope that in putting this music out there, I will somehow be able to build a bridge from a time long ago in my life that leads to right now. But in order to do that, I need your help.  I need people to pay me for this work, and I think I owe you an explanation.  Songs should stand alone, but they don’t always.

            Honestly, if it weren’t for the looming demise of my entire studio, I might never be presenting this work for you.  I would keep tinkering, trying to make it “just right” whatever that means.  While these songs are not in what I would consider their best form, they are in what I consider to be their no-shame form, and that will have to do. 

            Another reason why now is that I have become the person my music always needed.  I am a producer, and a teacher.  As a producer, my job is to make the songs work, and I must improve them without destroying the thing that makes them valuable in the first place.  As a teacher, well, that’s where it gets a little more complicated, but I will give you the shorthand version:

            See, a few years ago, I created a field I named “Song Studies.”  Maybe someday I’ll write a book about that, but in the mean-time, I can tell you that it is a lot like Film Studies.  We watch movies all the time, but we can also study them from an academic perspective, and make an effort to squeeze out truths from them that are not derived solely from the aesthetic enjoyment of them.  But there is an important difference between Film Studies and Song Studies.  As a society, we haven’t been examining songs in this way.  Not really. 

            From an early age- middle school for many of us- we are taught how to read a poem.  We are taught how to read a story.  Obviously, we can derive enjoyment from literature without instruction, but our teachers give us new layers that we couldn’t see before. As a result, we are able to read poetry and prose, and gain a richer understanding of them.  While we may not ever take Film Studies, there are people that we read or listen to or watch who have, and their study of film helps shape how we see it.  If a Song Studies field existed, it might do the same. 

            So while a song should stand alone, context matters.  And that is what I’m trying to do here: provide context.  Look at it another way: songs should stand alone, but they are often grouped with albums.  You might enjoy the Beatles’ “Why Don’t we do it in the Road” on its own merits, but for me, it doesn’t really work outside the context of the White Album.  The songs that you surround a song with can make a particular song work in a way that it might not otherwise work. 

            When I was very young, I bought singles on vinyl, because that’s all I could afford. I would be in middle school, and browsing in a record store, and dreaming of all the records that I would one day buy, and I wanted something of my own to take home right then and there. Often times I would have to beg my older sister or brother to buy it, and if they approved, they just might.

            It wasn’t until I was in 8^thgrade, that I began buying albums.  By then my brother and sister where not living at home, and I was earning a little bit of money mowing the lawn.  I would have enough money each week to buy a pizza or an album.  I remember when I bought my first album- it was The Monkees’ Present. I had been watching The Monkees television show, and I wanted to listen to some of their music. I decided not to get the Greatest Hits album, because I figured I would eventually buy all their albums, and I didn’t want to pay twice for the same song. 

            It was a strange album to start with, because there were no hits on it.  In fact, when I first listened to it, I didn’t like it.  It was only because I had bought it with my scarce resources that I gave it a couple of more listens.  Over time, I came to really enjoy it.  This became a recurring experience for me. Albums usually started off as weird and vaguely unpleasant experiences that grew on me over time.  To me, that explains my love of Bob Dylan in a nutshell. 

            While none of this was in my head at the time, I have come to see that how I listened to music shaped how I wrote my own music. I started writing songs when I was in twelve, and I think I wrote four or five that weren’t very good, and I don’t have a record of them anymore.  In the beginning my goal was simply to achieve a song.  The writing itself felt like an accomplishment.  It was very challenging for me.  I spent a lot of time on each one, and the results were never what I’d hoped for. They were never “true songs.”  I was learning to write songs, but I wasn’t learning to write my songs. 

            It wasn’t until I was buying albums, and pushing through my initial distaste for them that I began to write true songs. Perhaps I had simply come of age, but I had been listening to music for as long as I could remember.  But listening to the radio, and listening to albums that your family owns isn’t the same as listening to your music.  And the music that I was listening to was not what everyone else was listening to, and that turns out to have mattered a lot. 

            The first song that was my song was “To Be Free.”  It’s the first song that I kept for the rest of my life.  So what changed?  How did I write one of my songs?  Honestly, it came very easily.  It didn’t take much time at all.  I didn’t have to push the song up the hill at all.  That’s because it was true.  The truth is the easiest thing to remember, right? It’s also the easiest thing to write. It said what I wanted to say as a human being. Before, I was just trying to write a song to impress people.  

            At 14 years old, I was able to write a song, but it’s taken much longer to figure out how to record an album.  I’m not talking about the mechanics, though being able to engineer myself has been a big help.  Albums are curated songs.  What songs make the cut and why?

            Most of the albums that I’ve released were a hodge-podge of songs.  My first few albums were a mixture of the best songs that I had yet to record, and some of my more recent ones.  The result was, that they didn’t work together.  In some cases, they worked sonically, but not lyrically. This was because the writing of the songs were separated by many years.  

            When I was about 29 I began recording all my songs.  I was in The Navigators with Phelim White and Andrew Emer, and I wasn’t churning songs out as I had before.  We were playing out regularly, and even doing a little bit of touring.  I had a manager, and a full length album was on the horizon. So I decided to present them with my whole catalogue.  But a funny thing happened in the process.  I began to hear my songs in their proper context.  I began to notice that there is a story between the songs. The songs from a given period go with the other songs from the same period. I had been writing albums all along, and I hadn’t yet appreciated it.  While I had recorded albums before, I hadn’t recorded a “true” album. 

            The next album, which became Glory, Glory(as the Navigators) wasn’t a true album either.  It was another hodge-podge.  I wasn’t fighting to make a true album, and the financial/time constraints didn’t make recording such an album feasible.  The recordings turned out really well, but the album didn’t.  In fact, it wasn’t even an album.  It was only six songs.  

            It would take years before I had a very make-shift studio, and I began to record ALL my music.  By then, my band was finished, and it was just me trying to make music as best I could in my own studio.  Over the years, I refined my approach to production. I recorded hundreds of songs.  Some of these turned out pretty good, but I never released any of them. Unless I could get the album right, I didn’t see the point. 

            There was a barrier in getting an album right. Having recorded in high end studios, with Grammy winning producers had spoiled me.  I couldn’t put something out that was a step back in production quality.  And so nothing ever got released.  In the mean-time, I had moved back to Louisville and began producing other artists. I managed to make several true albums for other artists, but I felt that the only way I could ever make my own true album would be to spend money that I didn’t have. When you’ve spent years of your life in a pursuit, and you’ve got no money to show for it, it’s hard to gamble on your dreams.  Especially when you’re raising kids.  What about their dreams?

            And yet, here I am.  I started at the very beginning, because it is always a bit tricky to know where one album begins and another ends.  At least I know where this one begins.