I know I’m in songwriting heaven, if when I first open my eyes in the morning, there’s a song suspended above me, a few feet below the ceiling, like it’s floating in an ether screen... and it’s asking me in. It’s asking me to close my eyes again and retrace my steps back toward the outskirts of sleep: that in- between place. Once I’m suspended too, we can roll around, that song and me. I wouldn’t call it thinking, it’s much more of a kinesthetic exchange.

When this new batch of finished songs started to circle into an album form, I decided (as many of you have requested) to make a live recording... going for performance, over perfection.

So we recorded two live shows, where we got eight keepers. Then we recorded the rest of the songs in my house, “live” also... but no audience. I inherited my folks piano a few years ago, so it was great to have everything we needed, in house, thanks to Tom Blain’s willingness to bring in his portable engineering wizardry.

Immediate, generative: none of that “we’ll fix it in the mix” thing. Nope, it’s all going to happen now. So, here we go...