According to Rob , this is the record where he figured it out. He always knew he was a man without a country. Eclectic in the extreme. Shards of gospel oriented blues with lyrics about the hound of heaven chasing his tail. Other songs more overtly sensual i.e. “Fatman” and “I Slept 12 Hours.” Rich almost Claude Thornhill/Gil Evans-like voicings with a flute tinged horn section in “Plastic” and yet pure Billy Masters meets Duane Allman slide guitar on “Meet Me By The Riverside.” What Rob means by figuring it out is that this record could only have been made, for better or worse, by Rob. It is a combination of elements, a yearning search for melody that comes from years of listening to records like Pete Townshend’s “All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes,” Sting’s “The Soul Cages,” Peter Gabriel’s “Us,” and a ton of American blues and gospel married to his work as an orchestrator and arranger. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear bits of Mingus and Nelson Riddle in there and Elgar and Britten (just bits and suggestions mind you---Rob has no intention of attempting to tread with the immortals---too dangerous). If nothing else, this album contains four of Rob's best moments as a songwriter: “Evening Train,” “Another World,” “When I Was A Child,” and “Although It Is The Night.” The record is dedicated to Rob's grandfather Arthur Ballou who died of colon cancer in October of 1983. An indelible and inspiring presence in Rob's family’s life, he was a giant and the kindest and most purely good man Rob ever met. He rode the rails. A train engineer. Drove steam trains. Drove diesel trains. John Henry had nothing on Arthur Ballou.