This album was seven years in the making though of course that wasn't my plan. I got busy right away after my 2003 album "Jardin du Luxembourg" which is where I first started working with Roger Lavallee at the Tremolo Lounge recording studio in West Boylston, MA. Roger is an amazing guitarist, drum programmer, bass player, vocal arranger, and producer, AND a Pro-Tools engineer par excellence. I started to expand my horizons with the jazzy "Everybody Everywhere," the country-rock "Gonna Start Winning," as well as "Achin' All the Time" (which started life as a reggae song) and "Runaway Imagination." Steve Mossberg added some tasty keyboards to these tracks. And then I went off and did other things for about five years! They were good, important, things I'm sure, but why did I wait so long to get back to the music? Dunno. Finally in spring 2009 I decided to really finish this thing and I went into the Tremolo Lounge with the Elvis Costelloish "Message from Tomorrow" (Rob Simbeck came up with the "pulsing circuit" bridge). Roger played some nice guitar parts and I added acoustic guitar and the cheesy plastic organ keyboard sound. The rest of the songs are a mix of old and new, a few from 1978 (I Can't Read Your Mind, What You Gonna Do?, and Out of Nowhere). "Out of Nowhere" was a lyric of Rob's that I wrote the music for. We used to do a nice acoustic guitar version, but for the album, I wanted something a bit smooth-jazzier. My friend Peter Inglis flew in from Australia to contribute the Santana-like guitar lead, and the bluesy lead on "Can't Go Back." Pete also applied his string arranging and classical guitar skills to the tear-jerker "Hearts Don't Really Break" which he produced for me in Sydney with an excellent string quartet. "Honky Tonkin' at the Mini-bar" was written in a very hot, non-air conditioned hotel in Frankfurt, Germany in summer 2002. As I was sucking down all the beers in my mini-bar fridge, the thought occurred to me that it was like my very own honky-tonk. I killed two birds with one song by making it a country tune about cheating (this is a required category). On "Automatic Heartache" and "I Can't Read Your Mind" I enlisted Frank Michels in Nashville to do the basic tracks. Roger then added and replaced a few parts, I added some vocals, and voila. "Fruits" and "Autumn Song" are folky acoustic things, more or less. I hope you enjoy some or all of this long-gestating and eclectic mix of music. I have a bunch of new songs started and I hope it doesn't take seven years for the next album, but you never know.