Alan Williams
Evidence Unearthed

Welcome to my world of low-budget, high-fidelity aspiration. The initial round of overdubs was recorded in my apartment in a haphazardly assembled “studio” space in an apartment building with questionable electrical wiring. Thus I found myself in a little war with the local ham radio operator who tended to choose to broadcast whenever I went into record mode, and whose broadcasts to the world were constantly preserved for posterity on whatever track I was recording. The sound you hear at the opening is my former nemesis turned into a featured performer. Though this is his most exposed moment on the album, no doubt he can be found throughout, commenting upon my feeble attempts to sing and play.

The basics – drums, bass, electric guitars – for most of the album were recorded live by the awesome Coleman Rogers (Knots and Crosses sound engineer, he would later provide the photography for the Birdsong At Morning album, A Slight Departure). The band set up on the stage of what at the time was known as the Portland Performing Arts Center (PPAC) in Portland, Maine. With amps turned up to eleven and placed in various corners of the backstage, we played as if we were performing a concert, though without an audience that might grow tired of the same song being played ten times in a row. For me, having musicians play on a stage helps to frame recording as a performance, with an aim to creating moments rather than just “getting it right,” and is quite audible in the interplay between the guitars of Rick Harris and Thomas Juliano.

The rethink of the project also allowed me to add the string orchestra that hovered in my cash-strapped imagination from the outset. String writing for has become a hallmark of Birdsong At Morning, and that has carried over into this album. Certainly, I could have elected to create these textures through synthesizers and samples, but then I would miss the joyful experience of standing before a group of very talented musicians, waving my arms around like a demented marionette, and having gorgeous sounds emerge, full of depth and feeling. The “Expert Witnesses” as I have dubbed them, are an octet of many of the same players who have worked with Birdsong At Morning, and likewise were recorded at WGBH in Boston by the immensely talented and perennial candidate for nicest guy on the planet, Antonio Oliart.

This is one of several “divorce” songs on the album – nothing more cathartic that getting to wail on the word “lies” while your friends commence to pound out the power chord pulse all around you. During my time in Knots and Crosses, I focused my energies on helping to arrange and perform the songs of Carol Noonan and Rick Harris, rather than creating songs of my own. There were the occasional songs of mine that crept into the band’s set list, but for the most part, they didn’t quite fit the template the band had created. Or so Carol told me. But rather than a resultant backlog of songs, there was a backlog of songwriting energy, and as the band finally came to terms with its mortality, that energy began producing songs in bulk.

From today’s vantage point, it’s clear that the end of my marriage to Carol as we were in the midst of recording the second Knots and Crosses album, and the end of seven years of creative effort/struggle/poverty had left a bitter taste in my mouth. And thus, so many of these newly emergent songs featured lyrics about separation, painful revelations, and general “woe-is-me-ness.” Of course, having gotten much of that off of my chest, I’ve had several decades to come to terms with that period of my life, and those folks who shaped it. I am happy to report that Carol and I are on good terms, and that every now and again, Knots and Crosses has gathered together to play, allowing me to discover so much of what had resonated for our audience. These days, I revel in the joy of the music making, almost forgetting the pain that motivated the composition of many of the songs on this album. All hail the transformative power of music!

Growing up in the American south, I was initially unaware, then absolutely consciously aware of the lingering histories of racial strife that is central to that region’s (and frankly to the entire nation’s) cultural identity. I also grew up in a family of storytellers. Some of these tales placed my family on the heroic side of history; some did not. This song is about living with all of those histories, even those closer to myth than truth.

This song was once part of an entire concept album involving a night spent quaking in my car after removing a number of business cards left by the local KKK chapter in an interstate rest stop bathroom, recollecting various moments in my life where the lines between black and white, good and evil were crossed. That album never made it beyond a few cassettes given to the folks that helped me put it together, but this song seemed worthy of bringing back to life in 1995, and may still be worth a listen 25 years later.

The first chorus has a slightly revised lyric from the original. I had initially “learned to respect them,” a notion that Darleen interpreted as my acceptance of them, when I intended to convey an awareness of the danger associated with them. After 25 years, she finally won the argument, and while completely engaged in other activities (trying to park my car in a dark and confusing garage), the phrase “my eyes still reflect them” popped into my mind. Funny how the subconscious continues to work on these sorts of creative problems, until finally there’s a “You’ve got mail” announcement.

This track has some of the fewest number of overdubs, giving the listener a sense of what the group sounded like as a straight-ahead roots rock band, pounding it out on the PPAC stage. I especially like how clearly the contrasting styles of Thomas and Rick provide fresh perspectives on the song. You can hear this throughout the track, but especially in the middle solo section where Thomas evokes a more Neil Young-like statement, and Rick responds with a nod to his hero Duane Allman.

The harmony vocal, reminiscent of the Knots and Crosses vibe is provided by Laurie Sargent, a mainstay of the Boston rock scene in the 80s and 90s, first with her band Face to Face, and later on her own. I remember first seeing her in a video on MTV, so when she agreed to sing on the album, I felt like I was in the presence of rock royalty. Initiating a process I have used frequently since, I brought a minimal recording set up to her living room on a farm outside of the Boston, and in this cozy, domestic space, she proceeded to wail. All the kind hospitality of hot tea and pleasant conversation as I set up the gear, fell away the moment she began to sing – I WAS in the presence of a rock star!

A well-worn trope about the desire to escape a small town and the ponderous weight of fate that hovers in the air. Inspired by Uncle Tupelo’s “Chickamauga,” I thought I would write a song located on a Civil War battlefield. As the song emerged from the usual nonsense syllables that eventually coalesce into lyrics, I settled on “Antietam” as the word that perfectly suited the subject. The problem was – I didn’t know how to correctly pronounce it. I soon discovered the error of my ways, and after struggling to sing the title with the correct pronunciation, I decided to relocate the song. Looking at an atlas of the American south, my eyes landed on a small city in Alabama that I have still never been to. “Anniston” fit the melody in a close approximation to my mangled version of “Antietam,” and we were off to the races.

The first edition of this song was built around an awkwardly played variation on the faux-disco guitar that Paul McCartney used for “Coming Up.” I was always embarrassed by it, but couldn’t seem to let it go. 25 years later, I was more than ready to jettison it in exchange for a more Clash-style “Should I Stay or Should I Go” rip-off. Always wearing my appropriation on my sleeve, this energy seemed better suited to the song, but necessitated that I lose much of the original band tracking, keeping drums and bass, solos, and a few other elements. If the bulk of the guitars feel a little raw, well, there’s a reason for that.

Throughout the album, there are fascinating moments where mid-fifties me is singing along with early-thirties me. Early on, I decided to replace my lead vocals for performance reasons, and my guitar parts for sonic reasons. But I was either too lazy, or too enamored to bother recreating the layered harmony parts. Therefore, the choral parts scattered throughout are from 1995, laboriously constructed without computers in an homage to Freddie Mercury, Stevie Wonder, and Prince – more me please!

The video I made to go along with this was largely filmed at Roadside America, a tourist attraction in central Pennsylvania billed as America’s largest miniature village. As oxymoronic as that may sound, I highly recommend a stop if you’re ever in the area. It really is an impressive wonder. Pulling together an album from 25 years back posed an interesting challenge in terms of promotion, and the now requisite video to feed the Internet beast. I thought it might be best to avoid the sight of old folks miming to their more youthful selves on record, and instead present some other visual strategy.

With that question in the back of my mind, I happened to drive past Roadside America three times in ten days, when finally I thought – “what the hell – check it out.” Once my eyes adjusted to the fairly dark room, I was able to behold the wonderland before me and immediately began conceiving a video around the landscape.

The young man at the controls was surprisingly receptive to my inquiry about filming there, and we arranged to bring equipment for an after-hours shoot. Thomas Danielczik, the cinematographer who done so much work with Birdsong, agreed to make the trek with me. Unbeknownst to me, Thomas was a model train enthusiast as a child, and had dreamed of building something akin to a Roadside America, though more like a Roadside Germany in his case. So when we walked into the place, his eyes lit up with glee and for much of the night, I felt like I was working with a highly professional eight-year-old boy. Again, though the album bears my name, everything you hear and see is the result of collaborative effort, and perhaps for me, the reason the greatest reward of a project like this is the experience of working with truly amazing people.

In the immediate aftermath of my split with my former bandmate and soon to be ex-wife, I lived in a house almost completely devoid of furniture (or heat), with the welcome exception of an upright piano on loan from a neighbor. This song recalls the feel of those cold winter mornings, with the stark light of a January sun illuminating the swirls of dust, and every exhale of my breath. Seriously, it was cold. The wood for the stove ended up buried under several feet of snow, and once it could be found, it was frozen to the ground. Bleak. And a little humorous with a few decades’ distance….

When I set about recording an electric guitar to bolster the Leslie part that was already in place, I had to relearn the arpeggio, which proved more challenging than I had anticipated. Once I found it, I was struck by how it resembled something I might have come up with for Birdsong, albeit likely in some altered tuning that would make it possible for even someone with rudimentary abilities to pull it off. Indeed, part of the take away from this project has been identifying elements of my musical personality that have been present, if somewhat dormant, throughout my life, and then bringing them to light. A missing link, no longer missing.

I love the solo Thomas Juliano came up with, so evocative of what he has brought to the last few Birdsong albums. Highly melodic, yet fluid and nuanced. Thomas came to the album through Greg, as they were both in Talking To Animals, a highly successful Boston band that flirted with the big time throughout the 1990s (they are mentioned in Walter Yetnikoff’s memoir at least once – perhaps you missed it in all the Michael Jackson references). At the time, he was the interloper in the realm of a bunch of Knots and Crosses alum. Now of course, he is central to my musical life, his presence both welcome for the energy he brought to the project, but also as another factor that telegraphs what would emerge under the Birdsong At Morning moniker decades later.

This song always struck me as somewhat incomplete on the first version of the record. In reclaiming the album, I got a chance to fill in the blanks, and thus the string orchestra. The Badfinger homage in the pre-chorus gets even more overt with the string part, but it’s the last choruses that really feel transformed by the strings. Now the song builds to a moment where the hero stands surrounded by an awesome army of sound warriors, rather than as a lone feeble cry in the wilderness. In a song about loneliness, it’s nice to conjure up a support network.

I have no idea. Fever dream wordplay, but a lot of fun to construct as a recording. Clichéd cowboy riffs hopefully balanced with lots of metrical shifts and other audio indulgences. I have to say that Ben and Greg really shine on this – fully committed to creating some interest in even the most repetitive sections. I really wanted Ben on this project because of his ability to play in constantly switching meters while casually sipping a cup of tea. Ben, Greg, and I had been roommates in college and played together in a world beat/jazz/pop fusion thing called Danse Real. The rapport Ben and Greg have developed is astounding. They seem to telepathically communicate, intuiting exactly when to hit a double kick together, or to slyly comment on each others performances throughout a take. You can especially hear this on the outro, but it’s subtly present for the duration. My best friends also happen to be the most talented musicians I have ever met.

This song was a lot of fun to work on back in the day, with all the layered and processed vocals, the various guitar parts, playing with the stereo soundfield. And I’ve tried to bring all of that out in these new mixes. One approach to surround mixing is to create an immersive environment, where the listener feels enveloped in the sound, without exactly pinpointing where the sounds emanate from. Another approach is to really have elements located in specific areas, perhaps moving them through the soundfield like the giant battle cruiser in the opening moments of Star Wars. This mix has both, with a band that stays somewhat stationary, allowing the listener to take a seat in between all the musicians, as well as providing some audio excitement as things grab the ear’s attention like a bright object entering one’s peripheral vision. Those elements are the result of a mad scientist at the controls, playfully bouncing sounds around the room, impatient to let things stay in one place too long. Hope no one gets car sick…

The backwards guitar was particularly challenging as this album was made on ADAT – a long outmoded format that was quite common in the 90s. For those unfamiliar, it was the first affordable digital multitrack system, predating the computer-based audio workstations of today. The problem was that easily accomplished tricks with analog tape were not an option with tapes that could not be flipped, slowed by hand, etc. So I carefully notated what I wanted, re-notated in reverse, recorded onto a stereo DAT tape, uploaded into a computer stereo editing program (one of the first), where the file could be rewritten in reverse, then played back onto the multitrack in a trial and error fashion. Probably took me 3 or 4 days to get right. Kids today have no idea what their elders went through to achieve fairly meaningless accomplishments.

Lord have mercy, indeed.

More fun with audio, but at least this one has such silliness as its lyrical theme. My newfound love Darleen was an accomplished record producer and engineer, and thus inspired all the sonic metaphors in both the lyric and the production. Those keen-eared listeners will recognize the homage to the often bizarre instrument panning found on mid-period Beatles stereo records. If you’re listening in surround, the shifts from verse to chorus not only spread from isolated left/right mono to a stereo soundfield but move from front to back as well.

Except for the last line where the whole thing is summed to mono. Audiophile in-jokes.

The song too evokes mid-period Beatles, the moment when John and Paul still shared the experience of writing together, throwing ideas at one another, playing at strengths, reveling in their partnership. I’ve never really worked that way. Even the few co-writes I have done with Rick Harris were more along the lines of Rick playing me some interesting ideas and then me taking them away to the Batcave to work out the rest in maximum security. So for a song like this, I have to channel my best McCartney, and then counter it with my best Lennon. All the while, knowing my best Martin is going to pull it all together in the end. And speaking of, doesn’t Rick’s solo perfectly capture a “Nowhere Man”-like Harrison line?

This track was both a joy and a headache to mix. With so many little elements appearing and disappearing, moving back and forth, it was easy to lose sight of the overall balance. The original mix was done on an analog console, with Coleman and I frantically moving dials and faders to impart some of the frenetic energy I wanted. Must have been something to see. For this mix, it’s all carefully programmed into the computer, a prolonged, methodical, and honestly fairly joyless process. But the magic of all that work comes when you get to sit back and let the machine create a phantasm of sound. Silly, giddy, crazy. Just like falling in love.

Written for a loved one, I’m happy to report that the relationship in question ended soon after the song was completed. But unfortunately, too many of us can probably relate. Clearly, being part of a dysfunctional relationship can be misery, especially if it involves mental or physical abuse. And in recent years, I have been shocked to learn how many people around me have experienced this first-hand. But it can also be challenging to witness from the side, particularly if one cares about both partners. That’s the point of view taken in this song, describing the inevitable conclusion of the downward spiral, while somehow hoping that a crisis can be averted. How many of us have ever wondered, “how can all this misery be love?

And how can sad songs be such a joy to hear (and to play)? On this recording, the sadness is both intensified and redeemed by the absolutely gorgeous contributions from the musicians. Thomas Danielczik, the cinematographer heard an instrumental mix and pronounced it complete without any vocals. I beg to differ, but must agree that it is still a moving experience in that form where one can really hear how musicians listen to one another, leaving and filling spaces with a sure-handed grace. I am a very lucky man to have such talent expended on behalf of my little songs.

Leslie Smith, a staggeringly gifted songwriter, singer, and guitarist lent her stunning harmony, channeling pain, beauty, sympathy and outrage straight from the heart. I met Leslie when Darleen was producing her album, These Things Wrapped, which is well worth seeking out if you can find it. Greg happens to play on it, I recall. I remember hearing demos at Darleen’s, and figuring whoever was singing was some big country music star that I had missed. But when I really listened to her songs, I knew she was much more than that. Her writing was both inspiring and intimidating to me, but when I pulled this one out of the mental storage locker, I thought I might have something worthy of her attention. In fact, getting this song and performance out to the world was one of the reasons I wanted to resurrect the album.

Gene Elders, legendary fiddler from Austin, Texas graciously agreed to record in between his tour dates with George Strait. Married to a wonderful singer-songwriter, Betty Elders, it was through Betty that Leslie connected with Darleen, and then that Gene came into my orbit as well. I drove down to a small club in southern Massachusetts to hear Betty and Gene play, and cautiously approached him to see if he would be willing to play on this song. He responded without hesitation, warmly agreeing without ever hearing the song, or frankly knowing whether I had any business picking up an instrument in the first place. Some people are just kind like that.

Ducky Belliveau was a local pedal steel player recommended to me, and my jaw dropped when he began to play in my Jamaica Plain living room. I’d certainly heard pedal steel guitar, and had even looked a few over in the corner of various music stores, but to see the constant manipulation of levers and pedals, along with the generally difficult positioning of a metal bar over a seemingly infinite set of strings and still have perfect intonation was a wonder to be hold. Especially when you close your eyes and just hear effortless beauty.

I wrote this song in the back of a pickup truck. Sounds like a joke, but it’s actually true. Knots and Crosses had gone to the woods of New Jersey to look into a potential recording studio (where the Village People were recording their Australia-only comeback album, but I digress). For some reason, I let Carol and Rick ride in comfort while I spread out in the back, with a metal cap providing relief from the sun, and mildly reducing the traffic noise, I took out a guitar, and for whatever reason, the Garden State Parkway inspired the first few lines. I-95 and the Mass Pike did their wonders as well, and by the time we pulled over to let me out, I had pretty much completed the song.

But in the psychosis that was Knots and Crosses, I didn’t play it for them, knowing that Carol would have something negative to say, and that Rick probably dreaded taking on another candidate of songs to vie in competition with either of them. I figured one day I would find some great artist I could give it to and patiently waited for great artists to come ask me for songs.

None did, so I decided to be that artist, great or otherwise.

This one really gave me a headache. The initial recording was good, but seemed to be missing something, especially regarding the little instrumental melody that opens and closes the song. For some reason, I just wasn’t satisfied with what I had recorded and set out in search of a solution. Rather obviously inspired by the hook from Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” I was determined to avoid piano and synth at all costs. The end result is a rich combination of four different electric guitars, vibraphone and a Cambodian folk instrument, the khim.

Another last-minute addition was the new wave rhythm guitar on the choruses. I resisted having them for sooo long (two days before final mixes were due), but sometimes the inevitable cannot be denied, and so here they are. And I love them. It’s funny the head games one can get lost in while trying to put something like this together. “Must avoid clichés.” “Must only have sounds that can be reproduced live.” “No synths. “No cymbals.” (OK, that was Peter Gabriel’s construct, but you get the point) Sometimes the obvious thing to do is the obvious thing to do.

I think there is a version of this song on some old Knots and Crosses demo. I haven’t looked into it, partly because I don’t have a cassette player, and partly because I might suffer PTSD if I delve into the cardboard boxes that might house such things. Part of the original impulse behind Evidence was the need to reclaim my identity as a writer and performer. So, as with “Crosses,” I decided to revive some work from my (at the time) recent past. In a way, it’s a pop song without direct relation to my life. No real back story, no emotional revelation. But as with a good pop song, the act of making a joyful noise is reason and resonance enough. Pop music has often spoken to me – not just in terms of incisive lyric or powerful performance, but frequently as a matter of sonic “excitation.” That’s what this chorus feels like to me.

Deceptively simple, the verses move through a number of metrical and harmonic changes, nimbly navigated by the band. And coming back to sing and mix this after aging 25 years, I am struck by Tom Hambridge’s forceful harmony singing. A Boston legend, he plays drums on a number of tracks on this album, and had previously stepped in for Ben Wittman in Knots and Crosses when Ben left us for the big time in the Big Apple. Tom brought with him a much-appreciated element of soul into the Knots and Crosses groove. You can hear it on the tracks he plays on this album, recorded just before he left for the big time in Music City.

That was a recurrent pattern with Knots and Crosses. We played with a veritable who’s who of Boston drum legends. Seriously, I could list their names, and your album collection liner notes would back me up on this. Kinda like Spinal Tap, except none of our drummers exploded, just moved on to successful careers. Which sort of seemed like the same thing at the time…

The end section is my homage to the qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, or more accurately, the sound of his ensemble – no one comes close to his voice, certainly not me, and I can attest to the power of his performances which I was fortunate to witness on a few occasions before his untimely death. Listening now, I realize the connection is pretty tenuous, but it remains the source of the inspiration.

This song is new to this edition of the record. I discovered the single performance on the multitrack source tapes. There was no guide vocal, and my foggy recollection is that it only possessed a few fragments of melody and no lyric at all, other than the title. I think time constraints and the generally unfinished state of the song at the time told me to move on. But when I heard the band’s performance with such a deeply felt atmosphere that I felt compelled to try and finish it all these many years later.

Couldn’t recall much of the original melodic idea, but I decided to stick with the title and see what I might come up with that would fit. The narrative of the lyric can be interpreted in several ways (as powerful songs often are), but there’s a personal message in it, and I wear my sentimentality on my sleeve with honor.

Like a lot of songwriters, I prefer to leave lyrics open to interpretation, and frequently include lines that can work in a number of ways, conveying multiple possible meanings. This song can be heard as the standard trope of lovers going their separate ways, while at least one is holding on to the other in memory.

In a way, that’s true for the actual inspiration behind the lyric, though the circumstances might give it a different shade of meaning. After my parents divorced when I was already graduated from college and had long left the house, my mother met a married a wonderful man. Accomplished industrial engineer and business leader to the rest of the world, generous and kind-hearted, patient and loving to those who became family, he was an ideal partner for my mother, a woman who was off to change the world, with big ideas implemented on the smallest scale. She wasn’t exactly domestic, and probably attended evening meetings and events most days of the week.

Many men would find her intimidating. Or be frustrated by her inexact relationship with time. Et cetera. But Ed accepted her for who she was, and encouraged her to become all that she could.

I loved him for that. All the family did.

But almost 20 years into their marriage, Ed began to exhibit symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. And for almost 10 more years, he began to slowly recede from us. It is a cruel disease, and almost unbearable to watch.

To my mother’s credit, she surprised us all by becoming a kind and patient caregiver. I have never felt more proud of my mother, nor hurt as deeply for her, than I was when watching her care for her beloved Ed. And when he arrived at the stage where she could no longer care for him at home, she made a point to visit him every night at the health care unit, spending hours feeding him and preparing him for bed. It became her routine, and I believe she found solace in the repetition of it.

She was quick to acknowledge that she was in essence a widow, even as Ed held on, year after year. And I believe she processed that grief nightly in his presence, and afterward, in private.

As the long progression towards death moved towards its inevitable conclusion, they were both frequently in my thoughts. And so the lyric slowly began to emerge in my head as I worked on new melodic ideas with which to complete the song. Finally, one day while visiting Darleen’s mother not long after she had lost her husband of over 70 years to dementia, I decided to drive to a point overlooking the ocean, where Darleen would often bring her father in his later years to watch the boats come and go in the harbor.

And there, the verse came quickly and powerfully. I wrote them down without questioning, and decided to allow them to be as they were – a little awkward, but truthful.

It is the feeling that the musicians created while recording this mere fragment of a song that I found so compelling – the quiet empathy in Thomas’s opening statements and comments during the early verses, Greg’s (reluctant) willingness to pick up a fretless bass, Tom’s patience and dynamic reserve. A live performance in all the best of ways.

And there’s the epic guitar solo from Rick, with a power that I think may have taken us all by surprise. I wrote an orchestration to help match its intensity. Now it goes from late night low-key to massively anthemic (and back again). God, I love making music with these guys…

Ed passed away during the last stages of mixing this song. I brought a rough version to play for my sister, though never mentioned it to my mother who so movingly oversaw the funeral plans and the beautiful memorial service with grace and good humor. My sister took the song for a standard romance-gone-wrong story. I provided a little more background info. She asked to hear it again. And cried. So did I.

This song is my gift to them both, mother and stepfather, and our extended family, and to all those in the world that know from what this song comes from.

RIP the great Ed Anderson.

Inspired by a figure in the Portland music scene that seemed to have it all – good looks, charisma for days, a compelling voice, awesome band, major label deal. And he carried himself with ease and without pretense, which only exacerbated my jealousy. How could he be so good, and be such a good person as well – especially when I was neither. Tragically, he was killed in an automobile accident while on tour, after the song was written, but before it was recorded. RIP the great Manny Verzosa.

Manny was the lead singer for The Walkers, a band much like Knots and Crosses that comprised musicians from both Portland and Boston. I’ve since worked with several folks that were in that band, developing warm relationships, but at the time, I was seized with professional jealousy. They were getting more attention, getting more press, getting more airplay, and got their major-label deal before we did. Everything I wanted to do, they were doing.

When I think of that time now, I’m amazed at the wealth of talent that existed in this small corner of the globe, and how simpatico we all were (provided one could tamp down the dreaded envy beast). It really was a fertile ground – a less-grungy, more-rootsy perhaps mellower parallel to the Seattle scene about to explode.

Of course the other thing about The Walkers, was that they could work the same basic three chord country rock material and make it feel fresh and hip. These days, I look back at that with more envy than I did their professional career advancement. I’m afraid this song doesn’t hold up to their standard. Somehow, they would have known what to do (or perhaps, what not to do) with something like this.

But part of the challenge of this project is accepting that who I was then, and what I was capable of at the time might not be in line with my present sensibilities. Perhaps this song is best experienced as if listening to a record from 1988, when X, The Blasters, Los Lobos, Lone Justice, and a hundred other bands reveled in the joys of a G major stomp.

This is another essentially live performance from the band, with the addition of the massed vocals of Laurie Sargent and myself, in a nod to the George Harrison/Phil Spector choirs all over All Things Must Pass. Like “Crosses”, this song possesses a more straightforward approach to songwriting than what would evolve into Birdsong At Morning – standard tuning, first position chords, etc. In that way, it feels somewhat removed from where I currently am as a musician and writer. But as much as I can cite other musical influences, I must also acknowledge my debt to Knots and Crosses, and the world of Americana/roots rock that I was so immersed in during the late 80s and early 90s. Plus it’s always fun to shake a tambourine now and again.

And in the Knots and Crosses vein, Rick Harris takes another heroic guitar solo, culminating in a very Richard Thompson-esque string bend to end it all. Thompson was the touchstone for much of what Knots and Crosses tried to do, and it seems perfectly appropriate that Rick would slip in a little homage of his own. Turns out, I’m not the only musical thief on this record…