Pieces

1. Mary Jane Says
2. It Don’t Come Easy
3. Childhood’s End
4. Beautiful
5. Hold The Line

PIECES is a collection of 5 songs I wrote during a frustrating part of my life. Work was slow. Money was slower. My wife was going through some heavy things. It was a stressful time, but those times, although hard and draining, can be a good time for writing music. It can be very therapeutic and good for the soul.

MARY JANE SAYS is a song that deals with the pull of addiction. Mary Jane is a slang term for Marijuana. As much as it is supposed to be great for relaxing, creativity, and lots of other things, it can also be a major crutch. Something to turn to when you get frustrated that makes you feel like everything is fine. Instead of just dealing with whatever the problem may be, you turn to Mary Jane who says she’s your friend and you can lean on her for comfort. In reality that is a lie because as soon as the loveliness of Mary Jane fades away you are left with the same problems you had.

IT DON’T COME EASY is my rant on life. How everything can be a big
pain in the ass if you let it.

The song CHILDHOOD’S END is the one song on the EP that I did not write. It was written by Kevin Gilbert when he was in his teens growing up in Northern California. I started working with Kevin in 1994. As our relationship grew I started spending more and more time at his studio in Pasadena, California and he began to feel comfortable playing me more of his music. Songs that lived deep in the DAT or cassette tape (remember those?). Childhood’s End was one of those songs and he told me that he thought it would be a good one for me to record. I have been waiting to find the right place for this song and this EP is it. This one is really fun and challenging to sing. Also, Kevin’s lyrics just seemed to fit the vibe with the other songs.

BEAUTIFUL is a song about someone who’s stuck in life. Working a dead end job. If they even have a job. Time spent dreaming of better things and ignoring anything bad around them.

HOLD THE LINE is the final song on the EP and it about not giving in to all the bad stuff and standing your ground so you can overcome. Life can be a tough grind, plain and simple. You have to fight and find what makes you happy. We all deserve that.

That is where the songs came from. How they got recorded came from a few different sources.

Mary Jane, It Don’t Come Easy, Beautiful, and Hold The Line all got their starts in my studio.

Mary Jane started with the main guitar riff. I jammed on that for a while and built it on that.

It Don’t Come Easy also started with the main guitar riff. I was and still am really into finger picking style guitar although I am not very good at it. I was searching the Internet for all kinds of people to watch and there are a lot. I tuned the low E string down to D and started messing around until that riff came out. As soon as that riff began to get more solid the rest of the song took shape pretty quickly.

Childhood’s End came from working with Mark Hornsby, my fabulous co-producer on this EP. Mark writes for a number of magazines and was getting and article published in RECORDING magazine about the whole process of recording, from microphone placement to editing to everything else that encompasses the recording process. He had heard that song and since it was one of Kevin’s that was left incomplete and he knew that Kevin thought it would be a good one for me, he decided to use that song to base the article on. Also keeping in mind that I may use it for something as well in the future.

Mark got the amazing talents of Phil Naish and Jeff Taylor on keys, Tom Hemby on guitar, Dave Martin on bass, and we recorded at Dave’s studio, Java Jive, in Nashville Tennessee. It was a magical recording session. Those guys are so good and have such good feel on their instruments that it was pretty easy.

Beautiful started again from the guitar but I was messing around with delays and different FX and before I knew it another song was born. I was a little inspired by Pink Floyd and U2 for the sound and vibe and it took off from there. I had also been getting into Middle Eastern music. The use of the notes, melodies and scales in that music is sort of how the string line in the middle section came to be. A half step up or down on a note in a certain scale can really take it into another realm. That is what makes music never ending and amazing.

Hold The Line didn’t get its start from the guitar but from a drum groove. I was again messing around with delays but this time it was on the drum kit. What I did was send the whole kit through a stereo delay. The bigger trick here was that the delay return came back to my ears an octave lower. This is a fantastic trick that anyone can do. Just set the time or tempo of the delay and start jamming. That’s exactly what I did and started writing the melody and chord changes around that. The 2nd half of the song did come a guitar riff and built from there. I felt the need to rock out a bit.

Even though I got to play a lot of instruments on this EP, it would not be the same without the amazing musicians who put a little bit of themselves on these songs. You are all so much fun and very inspirational to play with. Thank you!!!

Mark mixed and did his magic at Java Jive AND gave the songs their amazing sound. Thank you!!!