Lost and Found: The Song

Lost and Found: The Song

I wrote this song when I was a sophomore at Kenyon.  I was taking an extra class, I was in two bands, I was putting on plays with a small theatre group. I was busy.  Still a song's gotta get written. It seems like some of the most creative times are when I don't have the time to be creative. I remember thinking first semester that I was writing songs that impressed me. I couldn't tell you how I wrote songs. I still can't.  When they're ready, they get written and I transcribe them. I don't think I remember thinking there was anything special about this song. Two verses and no bridge.  Still, this is one of the few songs that I wrote that doesn't really have a double-meaning. It's pretty naked that way. 

I remember recording it for the first time in my dorm room on a four-track.  Scott Wilcox had snuck in while I was recording the song. I tracked two guitars and a vocal. I probably spent an hour on it. Then I looked up and he was there. He said he'd been there the whole time. It says a lot about both of us. 

This song always haunted me, but I never played it out. On some level, it seemed too slight. At any rate, I don't know how it made it to the top of the record list. Perhaps it slipped below the radar. While the song was seven years old during the Lost and Found recording process, it seemed to radiate something about the whole time period.  I've always tried to write in a timeless manner. A good song today should be a good song twenty years from now. Still, this song seemed to take that concept to a whole new level.  It seemed truer when I recorded it, than when I wrote it. 

With Colin Brown on drums and Dave Humphries on bass it could have become more rockin', but they kept it true to its roots.  Dan Africk sang backup, and Meredith Noel laid down one of my favorite viola tracks.  I think we spent less time on this song per recorded second than any on the album.  It didn't just write itself, it practically recorded itself. 

Starlight Radio

Starlight Radio

I wrote this song my senior year at Kenyon College.  I had read a long article in the New Yorker, and which had to do with broadcast media, and the article mentioned that the American people own the airwaves in this country.  They are a public resource.  That got me thinking... 

When I was very young, like maybe 4, 5 or 6, I would put myself to bed.  I would often go to bed early.  I remember it was still light outside many nights.  I did this so I could listen to the radio.  I had learned how to use the sleep mode on my clock radio.  I don't think I had any need to set my alarm, because I typically was the first person up in my house.  I wanted to just lie in bed and listen to the radio until I fell asleep.  

There was something magical about the idea that I could just lie in bed, and music would play to me as I drifted off to sleep.  Before I knew anything about how radio worked, I imagined a place where people programmed dreams via the radio and sent them out to pull all over the world, and all you needed to do was to tune in.  

This was in the late 70s, and the music sounded thick and rich.  I honestly couldn't tell you what songs I listened to, but when I hear music recorded around that time, it awakens something deep inside me.  The radio comforted me.

My early childhood seemed fraught with peril.  I had managed to fall out of a two story window, drive a car into telephone pole, and deal with a lot of upheaval with my family, and I didn't really know what was going on.  I was just a little kid, and the world seemed chaotic and scary.  Somewhere during that time I learned about death. The radio comforted me. 

Fast forward 17 years or so, and I had a whole story in my mind about a woman who uses music to to communicate to all the lost souls.  She had overcome a mountain of struggles, and she was there to say that it would be alright. I imagined a small station- like WKCO at Kenyon- broadcasting to a small town, and she upset some powerful people who didn't get her message, and they had to take her off the air.  

I don't think I thought much of the song when I wrote it, but every time I played it for people, they seemed to like it, so it often found its way onto the set list.  I think that people like the idea that you could tune into a station that can bypass the corruption, and pre-programmed media in the world- that you could tune into something real.  

I recorded this song with Colin Brown on Drums, Dave Humphries on Bass, Meredith Noel on Viola, and Susan Hardy and Bill Greene on backing vocals.  I think it was when we added the backing vocals that the song really came together for me. 

Lost and Found: The Album

Twenty years ago I recorded Lost and Found. It was a strange time for me to say the least.  About a year earlier I had released my debut solo album Who are the Navigators? That album had drawn a lot of attention in Louisville. I managed to get regular airplay on WFPK, got reviewed in The Courier Journal, and managed to perform on several local TV stations. Things were looking bright. And then I got cancer. I was 26 years old. 

The year that followed was tumultuous.  I had so many highs and lows on a weekly basis that I found it very hard to to make up my mind about anything. The looming question over my debut album was whether it would be a solo project or a band project.  The question was never really answered. I had a crush on a woman who lived in New York, and we exchanged letters, but it never culminated in anything. People in the industry said that Who Are the Navigators? was all over the place, which it was.  It was as if one song-writer tried to write their own White Album.  I was told that I needed to focus on a particular sound, and I didn't know what that would be. All the while, I was debating whether I should move back to New York or stay in Louisville. I moved back for a while, but ended up returning home. 

I had two operations.  In between the two operations, I played South by Southwest for the first time. The second operation involved the removal of some lymph nodes, and it wasn't clear yet if the cancer had spread.  The recovery lasted weeks. I was hobbling around on a cane, and I took to calling myself "the gimp."  I began writing new songs, and I wanted to record another album. 

One day that Summer, I came home to Louisville from a week in Michigan.  I had been writing songs since my operation, and I was eager to get started.  Colin Brown and I recorded an album in a week.  It was really good, but the people with the money weren't ready to hand over the reins to us to produce an album. 

Bob Brockman was brought to Louisville to see what we could create.  We recorded some great tunes.  They had polish, but the process and the vibe wasn't there.  The tracks that Colin and I had recorded had vibe out the wazoo, but no polish. Somewhere between the two poles lied the truth.  The  money people wanted Bob, and thought it would make the most sense for me to go to New York. Colin did not want another producer in his studio.  After the year I had, I didn't really have the wherewithal for a pitched battle on the subject.  The money dried up, and the project seemed dead. 

That's when a distant relative (but close friend) Susan Hardy came to the rescue.  She was willing to invest in a new album.  Colin and I were very excited, but then the question became what would be on the album?  Bob had something along the lines of each song is a room in the same house, and they should reflect one another.  The problem was that I wrote folk songs, hard rock and pop at different times. Rather than plant my foot firmly in one field, I proposed that we record all three.  

Colin and I had been playing in a band with Dave Humphries called, The Money Shots.  We played hard jammy rock.  Dave is the type of musician who can play just about anything, so I enlisted him to play bass on all of the albums.  In about a week, Colin, Dave and I had recorded the basic tracks to about three albums.  Jimmy McDowell was on the other side of the glass.  It was Fall.

As is usually the case, the goal is always to put the "best" songs on the album.  At that point I had already written maybe two hundred songs.  I liked most of them. Much like Who are the Navigators? the album(s) began to take shape as another hodge-podge album.  "With the Wind" was written when I was 14, and "Can't Afford to Lose a Friend" was written when I was 26.  It hadn't yet occurred to me that I should group the songs based on the time period in which they were written. I kind of wonder what that album might have sounded like. 

Susan paid for musicians like Meredith Noel and Steve Cooley to come and play on the recordings. She also let me stay in her attic room in her house in the Highlands.  The main problem I had during this time is that I had too much time when I was not in the studio.  I could have recorded 16 hours a day 7 days a week, but that wasn't an option.  Colin needed down-time. I was restless and anxious.  I got a part-time job at Heine Brothers coffee, which didn't last, because I wanted to work in the afternoons, and they kept scheduling me in the mornings.   It's hard to open up a coffee shop at 6 in the morning after you've been in the studio until 2 am, so that didn't last long. 

Meanwhile, my crush had fizzled out.  I don't know what I was thinking. She was in New York, and I was in Louisville.  It was a relationship based on fantasy.  Still I felt very alone and isolated. I don't think I played out once the entire year I was working on Lost and Found. My bandmates from the first Navigators felt like I had abandoned them.  On an emotional level, I felt like I was running on fumes. 

By midwinter, the tracks were coming together.  We concluded that the only way to finish all the albums was to focus on them one at a time.  The acoustic album became the first album that we focused on.  The original goal was that the entire album would be exclusively acoustic instruments to separate it sonically from the other two.  But gradually some organ and electric guitar appeared, and it began to be clear that this was going to be the only album that would ever get finished. As a result some of the songs that were slated to be pop songs migrated to the acoustic album. 

When I began to play the mixes for people, I was told that it needed a bit more polish, so I asked Howie Gano to try mixing some of the songs.  Colin was not happy about that, and for a while all recording stopped. The process was in suspended animation for a while. 

In the mean-time I had started dating a woman I met who worked Actors Theatre. We moved in together in Indiana during the Summer. At this point I don't even recall why, but there was no money to put out the album.  I had been generously supported by Susan during this time, and we were waiting on some money to proceed.

Danny Flanigan was probably the only reason I played out at all that year, and he invited me and Butch Rice to the share the stage at Twice Told Coffeehouse.  Stephen Brown was there, and he took an interest in my material.  He offered to help put the album out, and he began to coordinate the design with Dennis Smiley.  Dennis used some pictures that Andrew Dailinger had taken on one of my brief sojourns to New York City.

My girlfriend had an offer to go to New York City, and I was conflicted about leaving Louisville again. The album wasn't done, I didn't have a band in New York. Maybe I could make some noise in Louisville as I had after my first album.  I definitely thought that this would be stronger.  In the end, I followed my heart, which turned out not to be a smart business move.  I released the album when I was in New York City with a pick-up band.  I had scheduled a release party so that I could sell copies of the album.  Ironically the entire shipment was momentarily lost in transit (and later found), but it meant a CD release party with no CD.

In hindsight, I think I could have made better choices during this whole process, but art ain't pretty. In the end, I continue to be happy about this album.  I am still proud of these recordings, and I hope you can get as much enjoyment out of it as I have over the years. 

Bloom

Bloom

This song was written in Brooklyn, New York.  I was working for a law-firm, and found myself unable to date.  I'm pretty shy by nature.  This was before online dating, which was better for me, because I didn't meet people who weren't at least curious about me. I went to parties, but I tended to stick to my friends like glue, and nobody ever introduced me to anyone.  At one point, I tried to date this gal that I knew from Louisville.  We went out on about five or six dates, and then she mentioned that she had a boy-friend. I sure don't miss those days. 

I wrote a lot back then, so I suppose it wasn't all bad.  I wrote some philosophy, poetry and a whole lot of songs.  I wasn't really thinking too much about the process.  I don't think I consciously chose to forego a rhyme scheme on the verses.  This song was very easy to write, but hard to play, so I didn't play it out much.  It took a couple of years before the awkwardness of the music felt natural, and that's when it was recorded. 

I sang lead, backing vocals, played guitar and organ

Colin Brown played drums

Dave Humphries played bass

Meredith Noel played viola

Steve Cooley played Mandolin

Mike Ross played the sizzling carrots. 

Lost and Found: Can't Afford to Lose a Friend

I wrote this song while recovering from a bout with cancer. I had had two surgeries, and the second one was rather invasive involving the removal of lymph nodes.  The question was whether the cancer had spread.  I suppose their is never a good time to get cancer, but this entire episode came to light after I had released my first solo album Who are the Navigators? I had managed to get some local airplay, and phone calls from major labels.  I had positive reviews.  It was a heady time. Next thing I know I'm in the hospital.

As if that wasn't enough, I had developed a crush on a gal who lived in NYC (I was in Louisville at the time).  If cancer raises the stakes in your life, it does it doubly for your love-life (or lack of love-life, as the case was).

Several weeks after my second surgery I began writing a bunch of songs.  This was one of them.  "The River" was another.  One of these days, I'm going to put out THAT album in its entirety.  In the mean-time... This song seems to be an expression of the expectation that this crush thing wasn't going to happen, but maybe that's not the end of the world. I was right on both counts.

Fast forward a couple of months.  I am recording Lost and Found, and this song makes it to the top of the list.  Colin Brown played drums, Dave Humphries played bass, Dan Africk sang back up.  Steve Cooley did just about everything else except for the acoustic guitar, harmonica and lead vocals (me).

The funny thing about this recording is that we recorded it too fast.  It was a running debate.  It wasn't until we'd recorded everything that we decided we needed to slow it down.  We slowed the tape down to do this, and that resulted in my voice sounding deeper. Also, if you try to play along to the song it's not exactly in the key of C.

Ever since this song was recorded, I have been playing it. It never goes out of style for me.

Lost and Found: Take it for a Ride

I wrote "Take it for a Ride" in Puerto Rico.  I was playing a wedding, and I was strumming my guitar on the beach.  If you listen closely, you can hear the ocean. It certainly was a reflection on the end of a long term relationship, but like so many of my songs, it may have started with an impulse rooted in my personal reality, it grew into its own reality.  That's why the song has stayed with me for so many years.

I recorded this (and the album) at CB Sounds with Colin Brown (who also played drums).  Dave Humphries played bass, and Dan Africk sang back up on the song.  I did the other stuff.

To Be Free: The Plea

This whole project began as an effort to raise money.  The thing is, I didn't want to actually have to beg.  I'd considered a GoFundMe, or something like that, but I just couldn't do it this time. Nothing wrong with begging for money, but I've done my share.  So I thought I would offer up some of my songs in a no-shame format, and hope to raise money that way.  Yes, I actually hoped to raise money for an album by releasing an album.  I never said I behaved logically. 

So that's how I began to proceed.  As I began reviewing the material that I was going to release, I began thinking, "With a bit more work here and there, I could really improve these tracks."  And so I did.  But then I wondered: just how good could I make these sound without investing any money into my studio.  And with a little bit of time, they began to sound pretty good to my ears.  At which point, I began to think: well, I don't see why I would revisit these songs again, so I should see how good I can make them.  So to recap: I put in a lot of work to avoid begging for money, and now here I am begging for money.  

People like these songs, so I recommend that you give 'em a listen. If you're looking for something more sophisticated, then buy the album anyway, so I can record more songs.  I can put out about 25 more of these, and the only thing slowing me down is time and money.  You give me the money, I'll give you the time.  

Enjoy!

But it here to give the biggest boost.  iTunes and Spotify count too.