Birdsong At Morning
Heavens (2023 Remaster)

In the mid 1980s, Suzanne Vega's debut album turned my synth-immersed head around. Her minimalist lyrics, and especially her very precise and sparse guitar playing sounded so different from what I had long dismissed as "folk music." There's an element of her style in this guitar part, not consciously so, but in hindsight, so clearly present. Like a lot of my songs, this one long consisted of nonsense syllables, with the word "lobotomy" coming closest to real language. But that just didn't seem to match the feel of the music. After several weeks, I finally sat down to create a list of words that had the same or similar sounds to the syllables. Working alphabetically, "astronomy" came first. It became a short list.

Coincidently, we were already thinking about the packaging of our CDs, looking through the work of Julia Margaret Cameron to maintain the mood established by the cover of Bound. I stumbled upon a set of portraits she took of Sir John Herschel, an astronomer (and son of the much more important astronomer, William Herschel – making Sir John sort of the Julian Lennon of the astronomy scene). Thus we hit upon an album cover, a theme for the record, and a setting for this song. The rest of the lyric was inspired by Darleen's nephew and his wife, both brilliant neuroscientists, who also do normal things like making coffee and taking the subway.

I'm from Asheville, North Carolina, as is the author, Thomas Wolfe. This is my version of You Can't Go Home Again. The cosmic imagery comes courtesy of our Heavens theme. The lyric came quickly while sitting on a Cape Cod beach. Not sure why sunny spaces bring out the darkness in me – "Wishful Thinking" was largely written on a beach as well.

This song is one of my favorites as the lyric maintains the metaphor while fully setting down the elusive feeling I hoped to convey. As a recording, Darleen's guitar takes this performance to another world, and Greg's vocal harmony feels like velvet. So much warmth contributed to a song about being frozen.

This song is about misplaced guilt and feeling responsible for things entirely out of one’s control. Inspired by a moment when I thought I might be witnessing the death of a friend, I’m pleased to see he made a full recovery, while I used this song to rid myself of the residual trauma of witnessing the accident.

As is often the case for me, the music grew out of some guitar ramblings and soon coalesced into melody and structure, alas, without words. I struggled with it for months until one morning after a strenuous yoga class, while lying on my back for a well-earned savasana, the complete chorus text came flooding into my now opened mind. I should lie around on the floor more often….

For several years, I participated in a long distance bike ride (500 miles in five days) called Ride Far. This event benefited the providers of Hiv/AIDS resources, and a small group of riders and crew raised over a million dollars over the course of eleven rides. Because of the nature of the event, and the small number of participants, close, deep, and lasting bonds were formed. The first verse of this song was inspired by the sight of thin tire tracks, left on the pavement just after a light rain, 4 days in, at the 395 mile mark.

By this point, exhaustion left me fairly brain dead, and I would have followed those tracks anywhere. Of course they were left by one of my bonded brethren just a few feet ahead of me. But they led me safely home. Ok, not to home, but to a bunk bed in a campground – such comfort, such bliss. The second verse was inspired by the ending of the film, Children of Men. In such grey blankness, hope..

About the inexhaustible search. Not a rebuke of belief, but a song in praise of unanswered questions. I'm content to leave the intangible untouched.

Not everyone in the band is a fan of the song, but for some folks in the audience, it's the main reason to come to a show. Who knows why this is. It's a mystery..

Once the astronomical theme had been established for Heavens, we needed to find a cover song with cosmic imagery. I remembered this song from the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers – the hypnotic guitar part and gorgeous strings (and Nicky Hopkins' delicate piano work) has always stood apart from most of the Stones catalog.

When I was a teenager, I spent a long sleepless night listening to the radio after my true love introduced me to her boyfriend. At around 3am, this song came on the radio. Something about that guitar line just resonated, the closest I've come to God speaking to me. Let the airwaves flow.