Classical Ballads written with modern lyrics. The music is both highly catchy and has deep thought provoking lyrics which span my personal life experiences and problems which relate to my current social class. The lush instrumentation color my dynamic tenor voice well. The album has an overall sadness to it, but still has room for redemption, which you could say would reflect my life. I hope you enjoy the music in here as much as i do. Thank you. Here's a quick summary of the song's topics; Fire Valley- a colonial style, puritanical song which relates to having to crawl through hell to reach heaven. My America- The vanishing America of old and a new gloomier reality that everyday people are adjusting to and accepting as the norm. The First Goodbye- My earliest childhood memory is drowning. I was struggling to reach the waters surface to no avail. It was then I gave up and accepted my death. Right then a calming feeling overwhelmed me an all my problems smoothed over. The next moment my fathers hand came down into the water and pulled me out. Since then I've found comfort in the inevitable mortality of my own body. Dead Faith- A family friend was a wealthy doctor. He had multiple homes, cars, boats and even racehorses. He over-borrowed, was disbarred and ended up losing all his worldly possessions. He ended up dying alone, an alcoholic, and racked with cancer. My cousin told me "He was a guy who had everything and he lost it all". I remember thinking that, if all he had were things that could be taken away or would eventually succumb to rubbish, he never really had anything.... I miss ya Lynn. Now's Not the Time- Basically everybody, in every time period thought they had it right. Give it a little time and everybody ends up being wrong. Morality is flexible. Don't believe me, look at history; sucka! Red Letters- Cus D'Amato mixed with the constant disconnection notices I receive. I can spot these things a mile away. I can't pay 'em so I do a little belt tightening. Problem is the belt doesn't have any more notches. River's End- The river track was recorded in my favorite spot on the Ventura River in California. I actually wrote some of the song here and sang it with the tempo of the river. It gels real nice with the track. It's a story of the journey of life as seen through the analogy of the river's course. Some times are smooth, some times you hit rapids, you pick up some trash along the way, and you see some beautiful sights along the way. Eventually we die, dissipate into the sea and within a couple generations are forgotten. The hope is that when we leave this humanly body we have positively affected the world around us, and then move into a spiritual eternity. Not really a sad song, it's just the end of a long story and hopefully the beginning of a new one. Lalo- A woman rips off drug dealers up north and instead of paying up, she attempts to flee and dissapear in the mix in Los Angeles. The I-5 corridor is a known drug distribution route, which she is now moving the opposite way on; which also correlates with her decision to go straight. She gets down to LA and as they say "old habits die hard". She begins to associate, again, with criminals and through the tentacles of organized crime they figure out who she is. Needles to say they don't send her a past due notice. Here's my PSA; don't sell drugs, don't (illegally) carry guns, and don't kill people. Water's End - Just some bonus river tracks I recorded for Rivers End with birds, airplanes, and other assorted nature involved. Enjoy these soothy sounds at maximum volume! So there it is; the good, the bad and the ugly. Now you get to buying this sucker so I can write songs about the pains of owning a Lamborghini and the outrages dues of my country club.