“There were these moments when I had been in the studio for eight or nine hours, and everything was blurry... the sound, the candles, the red light bulbs. It felt peaceful and motionless, like the silence found in the middle of nowhere. Proof positive that time is a silly little fabrication of ours. An obsession that we quantify and qualify and turn inside out. I felt lost. Only months before, I stood in that same room in the midst of a ‘perfect creation’. One we had dreamed up and brought to life. And there I was again, like years ago. Greg in Greece, Conlon dreaming of films, and me fighting with my voice for the last time...no more singing. I stood looking out through the dust of months gone by, searching for some little piece of grace. And it came and left and came and left again as it always does. For that’s where the beauty lies... in the silences and the screams. In the past and the present and the future. In the process. And somehow, it felt so still in there. Both the studio and my soul. It felt as if the quiet was alive, thumping its dreams into my blood, and moving inside of me. And a small breath of my life remains.”

These were the liner notes from the disc. Looking back it seems both beautiful and ugly. The band that Conlon and I had moved to Davis for had come and gone. We spent months building a soundproofed room in our garage. Jesus. I still can’t really believe we got that thing up. And I still can’t believe how bad it hurt when I got that fucking sliver in my eye. Rolling around all night without sleep, I finally called Cheryl at 5am to drive me to the hospital. So our space was there, and we began obsessively rehearsing the same three songs over and over and over. Five or six nights a week. My god those songs were good. Greg was singing and sounded like an angel. But there was weight. Weight that I still haven’t really processed or truly understood. Anyway, the band fell apart leaving much heartache, and eventually caused wounds in a friendship that are still trying to mend themselves.

Sad.

And this was my response. Songs that feel like water. Somehow, on the first track, I even managed to get my guitar to sound like whales. Two of them were songs I’d written that the band was working on, the rest mine alone. “Standing in the metro with Dana” was an instrumental written about a dream I had of her and I doing exactly that. I became really obsessed while recording these songs. She was ever so patient with the fluctuations of my mood. I recall well her stopping by from time to time for a hug. A kiss. Hands filled with flowers and notes. It was during the recording of this record that I threw my Rickenbacker against the wall for the first (and hopefully last) time, and decided that I would never record my voice again, for I detested it so. Ah well, I am most certainly a persistent man. I remember giving rough mixes to Brian at work and asking his opinion so many times. There is also a song about Dan Eldon on the disc, who was an amazing artist/journalist/writer/safari guide who was stoned to death. A book was published posthumously that was a collection of his journals. The first time I read it I cried for hours, so saddened by the cruelty of nature. I love this record immensely. It is free and unburdened. You can feel the movement of the ocean carrying me from one place to another. In many ways it is still my favorite by far.

TRACK LISTING

1. Prelude
2. We Warned You
3. For a While
4. Twenty Seconds
5. Dan Eldon Song
6. Standing in the Metro with Dana
7. Unfinished