Like the haunting Willie Nelson song, "You are Always on My Mind" songwriting is virtually always on my mind as it is simply a part of who I am. I can hardly remember a time that I wasn't doing it. Sort of like breathing. It's always on my heart and mind (as I'm sure it is for many songwriters) as it's not something I can force or turn on or off. It happens when and where it wants to happen as I go about my day, and I just have to be ready to catch it when it comes, because there's often no second chance on a particular bit of inspiration. So if you see me dashing unexpectedly into a vacant corner, restroom, bedroom or garage with my trusty iPod recorder in hand, don't be alarmed, it's just me catching a little magic in the moment. Or, if you're talking to me and I'm saying "mm-hm" but my eyes have a far away look, don't take it personally. It's not you, its me - clandestinely working on a tune that's whispering to me for one reason or another. And as a part of me, my songwriting evolves as I do. Therefore, my song styles have varied as have my life phases. Accordingly, I have written children's songs, operatic, country, theatrical, pop, choral, gospel, soul and these latest songs, which I would call folk songs of the Spirit. You see, I've always been what some might call a "truth seeker," and I've taken quite a philosophical journey in its pursuit. From mainstream Christianity to radical atheism and back to a more mystical spirituality, you might say I've been all over the map. Yet there is one common thread along this epistemological trail - the innate understanding that there is always More to Life then what we think. You might say that each of these ten tunes is really about that. And I suppose I could have called them all "More to Life". Or perhaps more distinguishing, "More to Life 1", "More to Life 2" etc. Of course in the end, I opted to give all the tunes their own names (what a concept!) as I figured it wouldn't jive well with the variety angle I'm trying to promote about my music. Now, I've found that one of the great keys for discovering this More is to not take things at face value, to look beyond the myriad mirages and illusions in life and reach for a direct experience of truth within yourself. FYI, truth isn't in a book - it's in you. And everybody has the ability to find it. This is one of the reasons I'm calling the album "Beyond Belief" (other reasons you need to discover yourself). And in order that you might milk a little of that More out of this album, I thought it might be fun to provide some various sundry tidbits about each tune: Be One With Me: Oneness is not sameness, it doesn't replace individuality, it actually enhances it. Ponder that one. The "Me" I'm talking about is not necessarily me personally (but don't rule that out!), but rather more about the Spirit within, even oneness with a a spiritual being like Jesus or Buddha. And I'm guessing this is one of the first songs in recent years that mentions the Pharisees. I suppose it was time for their 15 minutes of infamy. The point is that the Pharisees and the many religious leaders through history have not necessarily been there to help you develop your own connection with God, but rather to get you to rely on them and thereby abort that connection. For no particular reason, the melody for this song occurred to me a couple years ago while walking the neighbors dog (as a favor). Maybe the dog slipped it to me telepathically while biting my leg, relishing in his own version of oneness (ok, I made up the biting thing, but there was a dog involved). A final note of interest: a month or so after I recorded the song, my wife Claire included it as part of the intro to a little video she made about her parents who were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in the Netherlands. It was a very moving little film and I was happy to see this song play a alchemical part of what turned out to be a magical evening gathered together with her family in the cozy village of Vierra at a restaurant where William of Orange (the "Father of the Netherlands") had dined some 500 years earlier. Perhaps he was one with us that night, even as were all, at least for that evening, truly one with each other. Love is Calling Out Your Name: As you might have guessed, for the vast majority of my songs, the melodies come first, and the lyrics follow, sometimes days, months or even years later. This song was no exception. I had this very bouncy Celtic type tune rummaging around in my head while at the same time I was posting a lot on Facebook and Twitter about how the nature of the Spirit is love and how it is beckoning each of us personally, as it wants to flow through us all without conditions. The two themes embraced each other and a song was born. Special thanks to Patrick Cahel for his passionately strummed guitar work. Speaking of passionate, my enterprising producer (Sam Beckley, more on Sam later) and I were struggling to find the right percussion sound, and after surveying a number of sampled sounds without success, I mentioned to Sam that I had been more or less beating the rhythm on the back of my guitar while working on the tune. With that, he leaped out of his seat, ripped the strings out of an old acoustic guitar he had lying around, and proceeded to use the back of it to get the percussion sound we were looking for. And about that "Muck and Mar" phrase, obviously the common expression is "muck and mire" but mire didn't rhyme with "are" so I took some liberties with a word that has overtones of things not going particularly well. Look, Shakespeare made up like a gazillion words, so I think it does little harm for me to get creative with an expression or two. Besides, it sounds Irish! Only as Distant: This is one (of two) songs on the album where the lyric idea came first. I had been tweeting about the mindset of separation and how it makes people believe that God is some remote (often angry) being in the sky, when in reality the Spirit is inside you (he says matter of factly). In fact, this love is flowing through you 24/7/365 no matter where you are in the world or in consciousness. Yet, if you're not open to that love, then you won't experience the love. So if in fact you want to experience it, then something has to give, something has to change. And that something is your approach to God, your own perspective on life. Needless to say, this is a pretty big topic, but if you're interested in knowing more, drop me a line. Or better yet, find your own direct line within you, if you're ready for that. Now, my first take at this lyric was "God is only as distant as you think he is" but I was unsatisfied with male pronoun of "he" dominating the lyric (as the Spirit is beyond traditional concepts of masculine and feminine). I toyed with the idea changing it up with "she", but that put too much attention on the gender. So I ended up changing "God" to "Love", which doesn't engender gender whatsoever. And after all, isn't Love the essence of God? Now, when I came up with the melody for the chorus, I just knew I needed some soulful backing female vocalist to pull this off (for one thing I couldn't sing that high in the key I wanted it in). Enter 2011 American Idol contestant Ta-Tynisa Wilson. It turns out she also hails from Aurora IL and had worked with Sam before so he gave me her contact info. She agreed to do the song for a small fee (not small for me, but perhaps for her). Boy did I get my money's worth. Although young, she was a total pro. She came prepared and totally nailed it all in one hour. Even more to her credit, just a week earlier I had written a middle section where we trade vocal leads and then recorded it only a few minutes before she arrived (I remember racing on my bike to the studio to get that done), so she had to learn that on the spot. On another note, you might not have noticed the sublime tabla's on the latter part of the tune, but I was looking for a subtle nod to India bhajans, and so i was happy we squeezed that into what is essentially a pop/soul tune. Shen Tan was a made up character, taken from the combined last and first names of a couple of colleagues of mine. Walk Inside to Happy: Right this way folks, step right up and get on board the happiness train, derailed for far too long by all manner of detours and wrong turns. One of the peculiar things about happiness is that you can look forever and a day for it outside yourself, but ultimately no-thing can make you happy because happiness is always there inside you, just waiting for you to claim it, experience it and be free. It also can’t be found by conforming to a bunch of outer rules and norms, for you won’t truly be happy until your real self is expressed in the moment, and not suppressed or boxed in by all sorts of outer conditions. And while we’re at it, you might as well let go of beating yourself up for making mistakes along the way (some of which are referred to as “sins”) because mistakes are just part of the growth process. Now, before recording this tune, I went and got myself a bona fide guitar lesson from my oldest son’s guitar teacher. You see, almost all my writing is done vocally, I do hear instruments but not in a real pronounced way. What I typically do is I get a melody, then write lyrics against the melody, then finally get around to using a piano (or sometimes guitar) to create a chord chart, which I then bring to Sam and we flush out the arrangement together. So I don’t write with an instrument, for quite frankly, I’m not real accomplished on either piano or guitar. But then I heard “America’s Got Talent” auditions were coming to Chicago and I thought I would try to bone up on my guitar playing enough to accompany myself on the Happy song for the audition. Somehow, though, I got a lot more interested in recording the song then playing in an audition, where I probably would have sucked. If and when I do play live, I’m going to have to hire a band to do it, as I’m either too lazy or simply not motivated enough to practice every day to make that a reality. One unexpected bonus from the lesson, though, is that my instructor gave me an idea to use a C7 on one chord instead of C, which she called a “Taylor Swift chord” and I instinctively knew she meant when I heard it. So now I’m fully expecting to get a call from Taylor Swift one day and she’s going to want to sing a duet with me on this song after she hears it, as she’ll be so taken in by her very own chord that she’ll just feel compelled to do it (come swiftly, it's tailor made for you). OK I’m not holding my breath (lest I turn blue) but it could happen, right? And seriously, rhyming "Jupiter" with "Stupider"? No wonder the planet is blushing. Finally, after I sent this song to my dear friend and brother Mike, he remarked that "its the best single I've heard in years." Now I suppose the fact that he hadn't listened to a single in years had something to do with it, but I also had the faint hope that others might have a similar experience with it as well. But whether they do or don't, my hope for all is that they find the happiness inside them. Oh and about that phone call to God? Don't worry, I called collect. Be Who You Are: You're might have begun to notice that a lot of my songs have the word "Be" in them. This is the kind of term that's on the tip of my lyric writing tongue because it's a very handy two letter word to describe what life is all about. You see, it's not so much what you do that counts, but it’s about who you are and what you become, as your actions flow from this. We are human beings, not human doings. Yet currently there is a great gap between who people think they are and who they really are. The essence of the spiritual path is to close that gap - that gaping hole in the teeth of life. So when I say "Be Who You Are" I'm talking about a lot more than what most people think of themselves as being. But just what that More is my friends, is something I invite you to muse about, perhaps while listening to this song. "Be Who You Are" occurred to me in a whisper while riding my bike to the train station, on my way to my regular commute to my day job in downtown Chicago (where I work as a manager at a software company). The lyrics soon followed, again connecting with my Facebook and Twitter posts. Speaking of bees, when I went to the recording studio and Sam asked me what kind of sound I was looking for on this tune, I said, “think Police” (not “thought police” mind you) and Sam cooked up a Sting friendly guitar motif used throughout. We used real drums on this song; most of the others have one type of sampled percussion or another (putting the “Be” in Beat I suppose). Finally, General George C. Patton once said “pressure makes diamonds” (though I learned of this quote from the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert) so I knew that the bridge was missing some connecting strings getting back to the chorus, and felt the pressure mounting to get this to work. So while on the train back to Aurora, just 30 minutes before our final recording session for this song, the melodic string line swelling back to the chorus made its appearance in my mind. We added it straight away and the rest, as they say, is fairly insubstantial history. Yet I suppose if you blink you miss it, showing that one man's blink is another's symphony. Was it a diamond? Not sure, but I think it was at least a cut above coal (though not above Cole Porter). And speaking of Being who you really are, want to know my favorite city? Authenti-city! Flow in Love: Here’s the other tune where the egg of lyrics came before the chicken of melody (or is that egg of melody and chicken of lyrics?). If I recall, the phrase “look, reflect, intuit, flow, be, love” was born out of a rather poetic status update of mine in Facebook about the spiritual path. Yet it was a thought that was dying to be expressed in song, so I was happy to let it emerge through the birth canal of my heart. Love is like a river – it wants to flow. Dam it up and it gets stagnant, but let it flow and watch yourself and others around you bloom and grow, like Edelweiss. In the immortal words of some anonymous hippy type: “Dude, that's like some totally Taoist sh*t, man.” Yet even with all this beautiful, nicety-nice stuff going on, the song nearly died in the studio, for a couple of reasons. First, when I tried to perform it for Sam and then he tried to play it on acoustic guitar; we couldn’t find the right groove. It was sounding too hokey and folky (although these are supposedly folks songs, I guess I have yet to embrace the genre with open arms), and I was ready to let it go and try another tune. But it just so happened that my 13 year old son Thomas accompanied me to the session that night, and being an insightful creative type himself (and a much better guitar player than I am, which may not be saying much) he said: “why don’t you put some flowing electric piano [arpeggio’s] over the guitar to keep it moving.” And that’s exactly what we did, and dodged that bullet. The next threat to this song's tenuous existence came from the producer, for when Sam finally got around to listening to the words of the tune (usually low on his list) he zeroed in on the “Flow, Be, Love” part because that’s what I was calling the song at the time. Turns out there was some hair cutting machine called the “Flowbee” (though I had never heard of it), that apparently was popular a decade or so ago and he couldn’t stop joking, and even showing me videos about it. And I was like, “I’m talking about something completely different here” but that didn’t erase the association in his mind. And then I realized that people probably aren’t going to hear the commas between flow, be, and love. They’re just going to think of this ridiculous device plopped on top of some of some hideous head and the song would be dead – again. So I changed the title and the chorus to “Flow in Love” and the song lived to see another day. Man, when all the smoke is cleared, this little number needs to get a t-shirt that says: “I survived hokiness and ridicule and I’m still flowing – and you can too.” Standing in the Sun: I was sitting on the train to work one day and I had unconditional love on my mind (again). I had been Twittering about the subject all morning so the thought occurred to that it’s about time to write a song about it. No sooner had I thought that then an old "friend" of mine, by that I mean a song fragment, a melody I'd been kicking around for a few years but had no place to go, showed up. This became the chorus as the line "I love you more than yesterday" came to me. The "Standing in the Sun" for me was symbolic of how our Presence or our higher self never ceases to send us unconditional love, no matter what we do or where we are in our state of mind and heart. Of course, songs cannot live on a chorus alone, so after a few false starts (one which was sounded suspiciously close to the "City of New Orleans") I came up with the current melody. I was pretty excited about the tune and I couldn't wait to hear it more flushed out. I felt it was definitely an acoustic guitar song, and because I had been taking guitar lessons off and on for couple of months (more off than on) I asked my guitar instructor if he would be interested in helping me record the song. He agreed, reluctantly at first, but then got excited about it himself when I sent him a demo. He came up with some very tasty licks and we recorded a rough demo on his little digital 4 track and it sounded good. I hired him to record the guitar part at Gremlin studios (Sam's recording studio). Yet for some reason I decided to change keys on him (from D to F) and perhaps for that reason we just couldn't make it work in the studio. Sam was kind enough to refer me to another guitarist - Patrick Cahel (who also played on "Love is Calling") - and he ended up doing a marvelous job as he managed to knock it off it in just a couple of takes - but we ultimately did in fact return to the original key in D. Proving once again that there really is no place like home - key that is. Golden Wave: Years ago in the 80's, it seemed like a good idea to get a perm - and color my hair blonder than my naturally brown-blond hair. So it seemed to me that I looked about as cool as a guy could look in that decade. Yes my hair was wavy, yes it was blond. Put the two together and you got yourself a golden wave. End of story. Wait, there's More! And that more has to do with the natural trajectory of life, which is an upward movement, like a river, like a wave, like a golden wave of wisdom that's always calling us to move with, rather than resist its pull. You see the ego, in its never ending quest for security, wants to keep everything static, everything defined where it thinks it can control it and keep it all at a manageable distance. Yet the Spirit wants everything to flow, everything to grow, to express its creativity through unconditional love and joy in the spontaneity of the moment. In the process, all life becomes More. So there is a rising wave that we can ride to joy and freedom, we just to have to let go of our attachments to the myriad things that keep us attached to the anti-wave, the stagnant pool of resistance. So if you want to be safe, don't make any waves. Yet it you want a life of surprises, surf on the wave that rises. Musically, I think Sam and I spent the most time trying to get the rhythm right. I had a good idea of what I wanted, but for some reason, it was hard to express. In the end, I'm happy with what we came up with. Speaking of spontaneity, for all my talk about it, I have to admit that much of what I expect to hear in the song, I end up hearing, meaning I had it planned out in my mind before recording. Yet the composing of it was born in the moment so it I guess that still counts. And as an aside, one of the peculiar things for me about writing songs is that virtually no one ever hears them until after they're created in the studio. All my family hears is me occasionally humming them and perhaps the 20 minutes or so I spend arranging them on the piano. It's kind of this big silent secret inside me that's dying to get out, and I feel fortunate that once and while, it actually does. Anyway, back to the story, even though much is planned, Sam and I still do a good deal of experimenting, trying out this or that idea, but this was the only song where we created a vocal section in the studio. And so, the "Catch the Wave" phrase in the middle and end was created in the moment, when I was looking for something to fill a bridge that Sam and I had kind of loosely patched together. But the story within a story here is that when the melody for the middle part first occurred to me, I was in the recording booth while Sam was tweaking something. The melody was lovely, but try as I might to hang on to it, it slipped through my fingers, freaking me out a bit. And when it was time to record it, I nothing to sing. Until all at once the "Catch the Wave" melody you hear today popped through. I couldn't tell you which melody was better - the first or the second - but I can tell you it was that second that survived. So I guess this story would have made Darwin a happy man if he were alive today to witness this little survival of the fittest drama unfold, though I daresay he was probably more focused on gills and wings and such than he was on melodies. Now, when my wife heard the song for the first time (in our tinny sounding speakers in our mini-van), she thought we needed to keep repeating the "Catch the Wave" thingy, and she said "add some strings". And me, being the type who likes to please his wife (especially on occasion when she's actually right), was happy to oblige. And pardon, if you will, my spiritual name dropping: Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Mary. I mean, when was the last time these guys got together is a single song? My hope is that through it, they just might join us in our hearts. Time to Fly: I’m sure many songwriters would attest to the power of having a title. I mean, you can literally have a melody lying around in your mind for years, and if you don’t have a song title, it’s likely to hang around for another few years – all dressed up with no place to go. Such was a case with a little melody I had that was longing to hook up with a title so it could fly. And as fate would have it, I linked up with Elsa Bailey, a truly inspired soul and Twitterite extraordinaire. She had written a profound poetry book which she had sent to me, and I asked her if she had ever written song lyrics, and she sent me some samples. One of the lyrics was entitled "Time to Fly" and right off the bat I knew I already had a melody in my "archives" (the library inside my mind of unused song fragments) that I thought would fit. And indeed the chorus worked great but the existing lyrics did not. Not knowing what to do, I put the song on the shelf for a while. But the tune kept coming back to me and finally I decided to take it in another direction (and got her permission after the fact). You see, I really felt that for me the “Time to Fly” lyric was about the millions of people who are ready to spread their wings in this life and be who they were meant to be, or at least make great progress towards that goal. They just need a little inspiration, a little nudge, a little light to shine to help awaken them - and so I wrote the rest of the song with this thought in mind. You know years ago in grad school, I was recovering from the hangover of scientific materialism, and I understood that something unique was happening to me, but I didn't know what it was. One day, I went into a shop and saw a painting by Bessie Peace Gutmann of a baby with eyes opening wide and little arms outstretched, entitled "Awakening" and strait-away exclaimed "that's me - that's what I'm doing!" And so too now do I hope some people might listen to this or any of these songs and have a similar experience. On the music side of things, this song is unique in that it's the only one on the album where I actually play an instrument. Yep, that's me doing the little keyboard, pan flute sounding solo near the end of the tune. Who knows, maybe next album I'll really go for it and play on two songs - nah! I think that birdie has an album or two to go before its time to fly is nigh. Beyond Belief: For a long time the working title for this album was "The Eve of Being." I thought it was an evocative, poetic title and had written a lovely song by the same name. Yet for one reason or another I never recorded it (partly I'm sure because it was the kind of song that wasn't a real good fit for my voice). In fact, I had never seriously considered another title. Then out of the blue, "Beyond Belief" appeared. I can no longer recall when or where the song was born, but when it was born, it quickly became apparent to me this this should be the album's title as I knew it tied all the tunes together, and had the added advantage of being pun friendly as well! But beyond the importance of puns (if there is something beyond that) the implications of the song and what it has to say about our spiritual growth was most compelling. You might even call it a spiritual protest song. For you see, if you look at the history of humanity on this planet (which I know may not exactly be on everyone's mind, but go with me here), one thing that characterizes much of human experience is this - a constant struggle. Life on earth has for the most part been a never ending struggle for control, resources, power, supremacy, self-esteem, ideas, authority, beliefs and all manner of dueling aspects of so-called human nature that are result of a singular cause - the belief that we are separate from our Source, separate from God. In fact, the sense of struggle is the hallmark of what is referred to as the "duality consciousness." This is where the relative "truths" of the separate sense of self (called the "ego" by many) derived from tenuous beliefs (regardless of their correspondence to reality), gain their foothold and strength through their opposition to other polar opposite beliefs. All playing out to make the ego feel secure about itself. And this constant bandying about of our lives between the shifting sands of relative opposites, the struggle for or against this or that set of beliefs, has kept humanity in a stalemate for far too long. But it's also true that in the last 500 years or so, humanity has begun to move beyond this and thus has experienced a massive growth spurt in terms of its level of awareness. And I think we can really accelerate this growth in this age, take it to the next level, when we directly contact the Spirit of truth within our selves. And when we do so, we discover the power within us - the power of unconditional wisdom and love. We find that we no longer need to rely on elite types to run our lives, or allow narrowly defined belief systems (of religion or scientific materialism) to keep us on a cross of being judged and controlled by outer dualistic standards, rather than moving onward and upward with the transcendent flow of the Spirit. What I'm saying is avoid the middleman and go direct. Go to the source of truth within and be one with it, and don't just rely on yours or others perceptions of truth. And if you're beliefs are based only on perceptions - then question those perceptions. Yes indeed question your perceptions, cause it's really the only way to grow. Ok, now go ahead and apply everything you've learned here to this song (if there was anything worth learning), and the tune might make a little sense. Moreover, if you use your own discernment and listen to to it with an open mind, you may well think of ideas that I never thought. In other words, you may indeed go beyond my beliefs, my own limitations and get More out of it. If so, nothing would please me more. On the musical side, this song just kind of flew together, it seems like we recorded it very quickly and effortlessly. One thing though that you wouldn't know is that I often come to the studio with more material for the songs than ever makes the light of day, and this one was no different. I had a couple of sections that I really liked that eventually ended up in the hopper. I suppose it's like deleted scenes in movie. They seem great while you're creating them, but they don't always serve the greater good of the entire song. So you let out a sigh and say your goodbyes and move on (and sometimes when you can't move on, you sneak them back into other tunes). Another little tidbit here is that if there is one thing that Sam and I don't exactly see eye to eye on, is harmonies. I love harmonies. I love writing them, singing them and listening to them. I like to be overt with harmonies, Sam like's to be very discreet. For Sam, harmonies should be mere suggestions, harmonics by other means. So somewhere along the line I lost harmonies on this track and others, but I didn't lose my harmony in the process. I just surrendered it and understood that what people don't hear that won't miss. It's kind of a "if a tree fell in the woods" kind of conundrum, and the answer is that it makes very little noise, muted at best. Finally, I don't know if it's a coincidence or what, but during the recording of this song, I watched an HBO Martin Scorsese documentary about George Harrison (another spiritual guy who did pretty well for himself, I think). And I was stunned when I heard the final cut of this song. For what may have been merely a case of pitch correction gone wrong (possibly set to "Liverpool") I could swear George Harrison showed up and sang the last "Beyond Belief" line on the outro. Listen for yourself if you don't believe me. Listen to it backwards and it says: "Buy this record, because George Harrison would have wanted it that way." Seriously, can I help what the freaking thing says backwards? Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Sam Beckley (Gremlin Studios). Sam is an amazing producer. If it wasn't for him I would still be doing home recordings. And judging by my last home recordings, I wouldn't be putting them on CDBaby. Don't get me wrong, the last songs I recorded, were I think, very good in themselves, but they were very unsatisfactory from a high fidelity standpoint, as they were impacted by my musicianship and my recording equipment, both of which being highly suspect. Sam, on the other hand, can play almost anything, and he does it extremely well, be it electric, acoustic, or base guitar, piano, drums and various other virtual instruments that grace the digital devices found in his studio. He has an intuitive feel for my songs, (and I'm sure for his other clients as well), and he is acutely conscientious about time and the fact that I'm paying by the hour. He is a unique mixture of quickness, flexibility, creativity and virtuosity. Plus he's a great guy. Can't say enough good things about him. Special thanks to my wife Claire as she has always been very supportive of my music. It's been kind of a the soundtrack for our life together, beginning with our wedding and continuing on through birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. She's endured numerous conversations with my "blank looks" when I'm composing something in my head, yet she's always championed them as they came to life, giving me encouragement and gentle feedback along the way. Special thanks to my two teenage sons, Thomas and Sammy, who actually think its pretty cool that their dad is making an album. Not that my songs are on the top of their playlist (or even anywhere near their iPods) but that they are generally very supportive of my creativity as I am of theirs, which they, like all children when they connect to it, have in abundance. Yet for some reason, they think it would be even cooler if I grew a beard, but that thought created a little too much scratchy friction between myself and their mom. Let's say that idea has been put on hold for now. Last by not least, special thanks to my brother Mike, who has been both an inspiration with his own artistic pursuits (one of which we collaborated on a few years back) and an great encouragement to me through our individualized by often intersecting journeys in life. A great an loving spirit is he. Truly one of a kind and kind as one. Special thanks as well, to Tom Karas, for his enthusiastic and skillful album photography. I won't forget the chilly, yet sunny and delightful day we spent together having an artistic adventure searching round about Aurora for photo friendly settings. I also had a delightful photo session with Dawn Miller, meandering about Cantigny Park, going with the flow of the landscape while capturing a few choice shots. With all this thanking, I would be remiss to leave out our dog Max, who is entirely unimpressed with anything I do, keeping me appropriately humble. CREDITS: Recorded at Gremlen Studios, Aurora, IL Produced by Sam Beckley All Songs Music and Lyrics by Steve Larsen © 2012 Lead and background vocals by Steve Larsen All song arranged by Steve Larsen and Sam Beckley Guitar: Patrick Cahel ("Love is Calling Out Your Name", "Standing in the Sun") Vocals: Ta-Tynisa Wilson ("Only as Distant") Guitar, Bass, Drums, Piano: Sam Beckley Photography: Tom Karas, Dawn Miller Studios.