Production Notes:

Songs for the Time Being is now complete and can be purchased elsewhere on this website. Oasis did the duplicating. We recorded, mixed, and mastered the whole album at Clark Findley's studios: Phattman Communications. This album has been a long process of love for both of us.

We started recording well over two years ago. Most of it has been done on Fridays, and any other time we can get to it.

I've been fortunate to have some really fine musicians add their magic to this CD. Annie Benjamin sings on several cuts. Beth Cahill, plays mandolin on a couple of cuts too. (We're all bummed that Beth recently moved away from Dallas...) Beth has a solo CD available, called "Hitching to La Paz." For about two years, Annie and Beth were in a group called Chattervox. Check out their website. Chattervox continues to get acclaim, and will showcase at the upcoming Folk Alliance in Vancouver.

Annie has since left to pursue her own solo career. Her CD, "Life's Blessings" is now available...and it's great! I try to hang out as often as I can with them at a our songwriter's group, twice a month.

I feel very fortunate that Rocky Athas was willing to lend his lead guitar to a couple of tracks too. As you may know, he's a part of the lengedary band, Black Oak Arkansas. He and Clark have worked on solo project of Rocky's music, and they've also recently been working on a project called The Bluesberries, featuring Buddy Miles. My project didn't need a lot of guitar. But Rocky is such a pro that he knew just where to play, and just where not too.

 

Clark has done all the recording, mixing, and mastering. We use an all Macintosh digital environment, recording directly to the hard disk using Cubase and Clark's digital mixing board. We usually start with the guitar and vocal track, adding the other instrumentation later. As I mentioned, all the music is now done. It's just a matter of getting the artwork and some other things done.

 

Some purists in acoustic/folk music may be dissapointed by the "over" production of this album. When I play live, it's mostly just me and the guitar. But this CD has a lot of production on the cuts. The way I look at it is like this: These songs, for me have two lives....

....the life where I wrote them...which is also how I play them live.

....and the life that I "hear" for them in my head. That's what we've tried to capture on the CD. When I hear these songs, I hear the strings, or the mandolin, or the background vocals, etc...

 

And yet, they can also be treasures just all by themselves, as when I play live. I don't really see any inconsistency in this. I just think the songs sort of naturally have two lives. I love both their lives, and I hope you will too.