Across the Chords I didn’t think I was going to find a treasure trove of unreleased material when I went to the archives to see if I had enough unrecorded piano solos to make a Purely Piano II, as Purely Piano was the top-selling CD in my catalog. Turned out because I only used minimal information on archived material, I had to listen to several masters. My practice has always been, since I began producing in the early 80s, to produce and hold master quality cuts to be used later. At that time, I was also playing the roulette game of sending material to stars trying to get a major label or star to pick up my original material. After several trips to Nashville and L.A., and meeting the guy who wrote “Love’s Been a Little Bit Rough On Me,” and I got it picked up by Kim Karnes, I realized the odds were about 1 in 3 million I could get a song cut by a major star. So in about 1984 – 1985 I decided to open my own production company, use undiscovered talent, and put together albums. I was also still trying to make a “fit,” see in those days everything on an album had to “fit” the genre. In 1997 I opened Lone Eagle Records and put out my first jazz CD. I also did a live concert to promote “Cool, Smooth, and Sassy,” the concert produced “Joe Genovesi Live in Concert,” and spawned a couple of other singles as well. We had the easy part functioning okay from 1997 on and we still needed a marketing organization, and what do you know along came CD Baby. What a boost for Indie producers and artists. I hooked up with CD Baby the year they opened and still use them as my major marketing tool. Now I had some real flexibility, and could sell singles, CDs in either digital or pressed CDs. Besides that I could make eclectic collections which made all the sense in the world to me. Think about it, the radio doesn’t play ten Sinatra or Streisand or Faith Hill cuts in a row, or all ballads, or all Latin, or all tempo, they mix it up. So guess what? That’s why this album is called “Across the Chords,”, because it’s eclectic, different genres, different artists, vocal and instrumental. All the songs have two things in common; they are great songs and they are great productions. That being said, let me tell you about the music. I opened it up with a hard driving, up-tempo, dance tune with a great rhythm section and back up vocals by Camielle Moton, a super vocalist who has been working with me since 1983. 1. “Aw Right” will get your hands clapping, your feet stomping, and your spirit rising; come on dance! Variety is what makes music such a great mood developer. We now go from the hot “ Aw Right” to the classic ballad of beauty, 2. “Misty”. Paul Parker did the track for me and I did the vocal. Erroll Gardner wrote this fantastic piece, and I knew a guy who played tenor with Gardner back in ‘30’s. He said Erroll couldn’t read or write, so he sang “Misty” and somebody scored it for him. That’s how I did some of my songs, it works well, and look what we would have missed if it wasn’t available to Erroll Gardner. Now we switch to a little country song. I lived almost every song on the CD, wrote it, produced it, and stored it for about 25 years. 3. “What Will it Take,” is a cool little song produced traditional country, with guitar, tinkling piano, bass and drums, very simple and a very good dance tune. I loved Karen Carpenter and when I saw the TV movie of her life and how even though she had a huge following and a wonderful career, she suffered terrible emotional pain. I sat down at my piano after that movie and wrote a tribute song to her that described her life. I had no choice but to call it 4. “Lonely One.” I tried to capture her musical style, so as you listen to “Lonely One”, let the words walk you through Karen’s life. “Are You The One” I wrote late at night after I finished a music video shoot cuz there's kind of a letdown when you finish a project. So I was just noodling around on the keyboard and hit onto some changes and a melody line that was infectious. I wrote words and music in two hours and called it “Are You the One?” I got with my piano man the next afternoon, and the first time he laid eyes on the song he did a fantastic introduction and captured exactly what I felt when I wrote the piece. That “first cut” went on Purely Piano and last month had 500 scans, still going strong since 1984. Well you can’t keep a good song down, so when I met Emma Jo Morris at a convention in Nashville and said, “hey I got a great song but I think it could use a stronger lyric, you want to listen to it and see if you can write a stronger lyric?” She said “yes,” listened and fell in love with the song. She wrote a new lyric and called it, 5 “You Are the One.” I cut it with guitar solo and released it on my CD, “Open Your Heart.” It’s a good cut and gets a few plays. The Lord has always put the people in my life he knows I need when I need them. I had 2 or 3 cuts in Camielle’s key ready to record and a couple others I intended to lay down, I think it was 6 cuts I needed and I had booked the studio. When I called Camielle I forgot she told me she was going out of town but she gave me Becky Noble's number. They sang in a trio she said, and Becky can do this no problem. Camielle was so right. I got Becky in, she read very well, had a very sweet voice, and she was a music teacher, so she was technically correct on everything. I don’t know why I let this awesome acoustic cut just sit for so long, but now it’s found a new home on “Across the Chords.” I cut 5. “You Are the One” with Becky so folks be prepared to be pleasantly pleased as you listen to this sweet, tender, rendition, of a beautiful love song. I was in Montgomery Alabama on business I think in 1996 and walked over to a restaurant to pick up some dinner. While I’m waiting for them to bring out my food, I looked up at the TV and Judge Wapner was on, and he says to this lady “you’re free to go.” I said, to myself that sounds like a song to me. So I went back and spent the night crafting a lyric for 6. “You’re Free to Go.” This started happening a lot more frequently after I changed my method to writing a complete lyric and putting music under it. As I got into it, I realized the concept of the lyric was “I love you so much I want you to be happy even if I’m out of your life,” a unique altruistic concept. So the music to carry the message needed to go from tender to bold with a lift to make the transition a smooth build. I was pleased with what came out in my first stage piano track and then needed to produce a very melancholy track, with a fantastic ending. I decided since an excellent female vocalist was sent to me for another dramatic piece I wrote, I decided to make the full track in her key. The track came down exactly as I wanted it so I called Sharon. I met Sharon at a funeral in Salina Kansas. Singers are found everywhere; Julie Andrews was singing at a wedding when Blake Edwards found her the first time. Sharon sang, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and did it very well. I asked her if she would be interested in doing some melodies for me, she did and our relationship began. I can’t remember whether Sharon had recorded or not before we started working together, but she was easy to work with, felt what the song was asking for, and did a great job. In addition to that, we had a killer track with a big, rich, full voice and it was and is a great recording. I took it to Nashville to a critique session. The professional was Rex Allen’s daughter, Bonita Allen. as far as I know she doesn’t sing, I think she may produce, or market/manage talent. Her take was she didn’t like Sharon’s big voice. She called her “in your face delivery”. In her opinion the song should have been done soft and sweet. Another male producer who stopped to listen as he was heading to his group, said “it’s great the way it is because the concept is so different, and she’s got a great voice, don’t change it.” So since I agreed with him here is the unchanged 6.“You’re Free to Go.” 7. “Gloria Jean” is one of the songs I, like Errol Gardner, had to sing for somebody, and have them score it for me. To make sure I had it all in order I recorded it on an old non-stereo cassette recorder. That way Paul Parker, the man who became my mentor and composition coach, could listen to phrases 1 or2 measures at a time. This was the third song we did this way and it has been rearranged a couple of times. I had an inspiration one day to do “Gloria Jean” totally different than anything we had. So I said to Paul, “give me a C chord and follow me.” He rolled the chord and I did a very rubato (slow) phrase and strung it out. Paul followed with decoration, I wailed the answer to the first two bars, Paul decorated it. We were really groovin’ when I was winding down the 8 bar first section. I let Paul finish it and jumped in to the 2nd section twice as fast as we usually did with Paul right behind. So we went from half as fast to twice as fast and it cooked. The next recording session, we laid it down with same guys as “Aw Right.” I put that vocal rendition on “By Special Request,” another of my CDs and later I decided to have Jeff Scheffler do an instrumental and put it on here with all this other good stuff. It’s a pretty well-known fact that great music often can be ripped off, I think a lot of it got started when artists started using short sections of music for rapping. Well I decided to follow the instructions I learned studying lyric writing in Nashville. The art of re-write. They said if you’ve got a very good or great melody keep writing new lyrics for it I can’t prove it, but I think the 3rd lyric for “Are You the One,” “He Is the One,” by Emma Jo Morris was the inspiration for “Keeper Of The Stars”. “He Is The One” was played at another Nashville critique session in 1993 or 1994 for gospel music. They critiquer was Karen Staley. Karen was very positive and said she loved the song and thought Camirlle’s voice was out of sight. In 1994 Karen with 2 other writers wrote “Keeper Of The Stars”. The song was released in 1994 and my ex-wife when she heard it said “isn’t that the same message as “He Is The One?” I said, “sure sounds like it.” Seems like it is possible “He Is The One” was the inspiration for a big hit for Tracy Byrd called the “Keeper of the Stars,” which as of today has had 4,457,000 YouTube views. I’m not mad at Karen Staley, because my music and Emma’s lyrics inspired three people to write a song about Jesus Christ, that is played at a lot of weddings, so praise the Lord for his goodness and mercy. I wrote a fourth lyric to the “Are You the One,” melody and called it 8. “I Will Love You.” I took Paul and the boys in the studio and we made a very sweet, tender, track and I made one small change to the melody line. Then I brought in Sharon to cut it, and stored it all this time, now it’s time for “I Will Love You” to meet the public, and as big and broad as Sharon did “You're Free to Go,” she did a very beautiful pensive delivery of this sweet lyric. 9 “Perfectly,” this is a love song that drips with gratitude and satisfaction. This song got started before I went to Nashville to study lyric writing. I wrote the first section and a lyric that worked for that section. I closed my book and didn’t look at “Perfectly” again until I was starting another project and looking through my manuscript book to see what I had forgotten about. This was after Nashville and when I was working with Chuck Pennington. As soon as I ran through what I had, I started working on it and crafted the lyric being able to build on what I started with. It turned out to be quite a different tune than I expected. Chuck made me, a great piano, bass track. I then took Jeff again to lay down a guitar track, and oh what a track he gave me. I didn’t know it until I heard John Pintenelli on the radio one night say the King Cole Trio was piano, bass, and guitar no drums. I figured if it worked for Nat King Cole, it should work for me. I listened to Jeffy work for a while and decided I wanted to bring my other secret weapon on board. So I brought Richie Love in to decorate with Jeff and Chuck. He did a fantastic job embellishing this beautiful ballad. I kid you not, you will be in awe of the decorative work, these 2 great players did, so enjoy “Perfectly.” Time for a change of pace; in my Nashville days I met a fabulous producer and vocalist named Lea Jane Bernati-Burie. She is as popular is Alison Krauss in Nashville for back up singing. She sang behind all the big ones, Kenny, Dolly, Emmy Lou, Frank Junior, and I think she’s on “These Boots Were Made for Walking with Nancy Sinatra. I was trying to write a country tune so bad I figured if I got it produced in Nashville it would sound country. Well I wrote a song called, “The Smile of my Child,” and sent it to Lea Jane to produce me a track, a bona fide country track, and she did. She sent it up to me, I recorded it, and shopped it around, some. It was a really great track, and I put a very good vocal on that Parker liked a lot. Well this song got a new arrangement in Omaha and I used it for the theme song on my Dog Train video “It's In The Bag”. I made an instrumental with who else, Jeff and Richie, I changed the title to, 10. “Let’s Do It Again,” and both of these guys demonstrated why they are sought after players! Enjoy! 11. “Before You Go.” This was my first full blown orchestrated production. I wrote this very easily and it proved to be a recurring means for me to find material to write songs about. I told you to Judge Wapner gave me, “You’re Free to Go.” Well my mentor, Paul Parker, said to me as I was leaving his place after a session, “Before You Go.” I said, “whoa that’s a title.” In those days I could do pretty much anything I wanted to so I went home and wrote “Before You Go.” A day or two later I got with Paul and he made me a track. He was amazed that the song went down so easily. I said,“ yeah I’m going to have it arranged with strings and we’ll go all out on this one. I hired Katy Schrader to arrange it and to produce the session. She got about 30 strings from Omaha Symphony, and a rhythm section, and of course Paul on piano. I need to make note here; this is where my management skills began to show up as a producer. The engineer and the studio I was working with were very good, but the engineer did not run a tight ship. Session was supposed to start at 8 o’clock, people straggled in and we got started at 8:45. When Kathy told me she was set, but we could not start till 9:30 because Paul had to teach till 9:00, I told the engineer we start at 9:30 tomorrow, have the chairs, stands, and musician stands ready and up at 9:15 downbeat at 9:30. He did it and I never had a late start again. The session was sweet and went well. Camielle was there also and laid down the background vocals. I was pleased with, “Before You Go.” I had my voice coach help me produce a music video. Couldn’t get on MTV, but there was a new show on the Old Nashville Network, now CMT, called Video Country, I managed to make a friend of the producer and sent him a one dub of “Before You Go.” It was a pretty video and was rated high and I received over 500 pieces of fan mail on it and the “Before You Go” video is running on YouTube today, be sure you check it out. 12. “You’re All I Need.” After I get the full blown, “Before You Go,” and could afford it, I decided to do two more full orchestrations with the Symphony. I got Katy to arrange and produce the two songs. Pretty much the same crew that did “Before You Go”, started on time and did some beautiful work. “You’re All I Need,” was originally “Gabrielle” which is doing well instrumentally and is on this CD as an instrumental as well. I decided “Gabrielle” could speak to a broader audience with a different lyric. “You’re All I Need,” laid down so nice against the music which I learned is called “Prosody.” Prosody is the perfect match of music to lyric, which is what we now have with “You’re All I Need.” See if you don’t agree! 13. “I Always Knew,” was like a Christmas present to me! I’ll tell you why, first of all I got to work with a super talented musician named Randy Long. I had written this song and wanted to get a more pop feel to what I was doing and God provided Randy to take me where I wanted to go. I played my piano/vocal for him and asked him what he thought. He said he loved it and praised my melody and said he could already hear what he wanted to do with the song. I’m not even sure when and where we got it done and thought it was lost. I fully believe the Lord let me find, “I Always Knew,” to get it out to the public, after being tucked away for at least 20 years. But great music like Kosher Money never gets lost. I thought it was a pretty good cut when we finished, but stashed it away because I didn’t know where it fit. Don’t have to worry about where he fits, because it fits anywhere good music is played! 14.“Make The World Go Away.” Great country song but give it to a great jammin rhythm section and you get a hard driving, blues cut, with great sax, bass, drum, and piano work. They country purist on 16th Ave., probably won’t like it. But those country folk who like to dance will dig this. “What do you think?” 15 .“How Deep Is The Ocean.” “How Deep Is The Ocean” My idol is Frank so when I was singing karaoke I had Chuck make me a great track and Richie do his exceptional alto sax decoration for me and am now releasing finally after 4 years my version of “How Deep Is The Ocean.” An absolutely spot on lyric matched with awesome music make this a timeless classic and an honor for me to sing it for you. 16. “You Are My Woman” On the session to lay down the rhythm track for “You Are My Woman” a last minute fill im drummer came up with a quirky Latin riff that went thru the quintet like free booze at the offic e Christmas party, and turned the heat up making this a dance tune to die for. A 3 minute Samba is like a 4 minute mile but way more fun! They taught Tom in Nashville, that nothing is etched in stone until it becomes a hit. The rewrite rule applied here and a 3rd lyric was written “You Are My Woman.” Initial reaction has been good as people fill the dance floor for this one. So Do it to it !!! 17. “John Miller” was a very cool young man, a good golfer, a good wide receiver, a good student, and a great guy all around! He had just finished his Freshman Year at Nebraska and went to celebrate the 4th of July with a group of friends' There were about 8 in the group so they took 2 cars. They all were under 21 but some one had supplied them booze. After the fire works display they headed home. About 1.5 miles from the fire works display the following car locked bumpers with the front car and rolled it across 3 lanes of traffic to slam into a tree, crushing John Miller to death at age 19. I was planning to cut some parts out of the song, but long story short I like to listen to the talent I produce especially Richie Love. So after listening to John Miller and before I got back to the studio to mix and master, the inspiration hit me to edit this cut to do what it was written to do help people drink responsibly, drink smarter!! 3 of my family members were killed by drunk drivers! Maybe just maybe this song can save one life That is my hope and prayer. 18. “My Baby’s Gone.” Started out as a country song written by my oldest son before he left to serve a mission for our church. I asked him before he left if I could rework the song as a blues number. He said cool, so I did. The only thing that remains from his original song was the idea, he lost his love. It’s the theme of a lot of country songs, but it’s also the theme of a lot of blues songs and I had a better feel for blues than I did for country at the time. So I found some blues licks on the piano and put together “She’s Gone.” When Parker and I worked it a couple of times we thought it had some decent potential. We went in and recorded a great track and I cut a vocal on it and, I started singing it at the Revolving Door. It went over pretty good and I got some people up to dance. I had Davey Polson put a sax line in and it was great. So good I released it as an instrumental. It’s still being streamed on the web so I believe that if it works instrumentally why don’t you try a different lyric to see if it works as a vocal? I re-titled it “My Baby’s Gone,” and wrote a new lyric and let it sit, but now it’s time for this tune to get up and fly taking the same message, but stated a little different with the same sexy sounding track. 19.“Gabrielle” was written to bring out a very pretty name that belonged to a very pretty girl. I had high hopes that the beautiful arrangement and orchestral track would take “Gabrielle” into the realms of the great song “Laura.” I thought all things were equal, except “Laura,” was a theme song from a hit black-and-white movie from the 40’s named “Laura.” I was going to make a music video of “Gabrielle,” but never got to it. I wrote the new lyric “You’re All I Need,” and put it on this CD and owing to the fact that the piano only version of “Gabrielle,” is a top-seller for us, I have to believe the melody is desirable. So I decided to release “Gabrielle” as an orchestral instrumental for those who like soothing unobtrusive music to relax by. Go ahead chill! 20. “Open Your Heart,” was beginning to take shape just before 911 happened. I set it aside, wrote another song about 911, and came back to it about 60 days after 911. So when Lea Jane was ready I sent her, “Open Your Heart.” This cut is where you see the quality of musicians in Nashville. My music is generally speaking more complicated with bigger choruses and off-beat rhythms and usually wider range in the vocals. Great players enjoy challenging material. Lea Jane put together a small jazz trio and made me a very cool track. The first time I played it for Parker, he said, “wow she’s got a great pianist.” From a symphony soloist that is a nice complement. The reason Lea Jane could make such great tracks is because she knew from the scratch demo I sent her exactly what I wanted and she saw to it that I got it. I put a vocal down to the track and it became the lead track on my CD of the same name, which is still selling on CD Baby. However, every or maybe most, song writers are always trying to write that one song that will become an icon. So I thought let me make more versions of “Open Your Heart”. So I had Richie do a version, which became the lead cut on Silky and Sensuous, selling on CD Baby, fighting to be #1seller. Then I said to myself why not have Jeff cut it as well, and I did. I used parts of Jeff’s on the cooking section of my dog training video. I thought if I’m going to teach people how to train their dogs to not lose birds I ought to show them how to cook them. So now Jeff’s version gets a chance to further help you chill out because it’s smooth as silk and refreshing as a summer’s day. Come Check it out! Remember on my originals I give you a full cut to listen to, to help you to decide to buy. The cover songs by rule, only give you 30 seconds to decide to buy.