Track 1: I Fall in Love

One of my favorite songwriters, Jonathan Spottiswoode, has a song or two in 5/4 that I love. One day, while Stewart Myers was setting up mics to record acoustic guitar for an artist we were producing, I was sitting in the control room trying to cop Jonathan's approach. I stumbled onto the progression to IFIL and immediately had the opening lines of the melody and the lyric about jealous boys in Lucerne. It was different from anything I'd ever come up with and I panicked thinking I would forget it. This was before easy voice memo recording on cell phones etc. so I (more than a little rudely) put myself on the mic that the artist was waiting for and started recording my own idea. Generally frowned-upon producer behavior for sure.

Everything about the song and the rest of the lyric felt true to my relationship to Corey - but neither she nor I had ever been to Lucerne. I wanted that to be true too. So, on our 5th anniversary, while trekking in Switzerland, we took a break and descended into Lucerne where it all happened as described in the song.

When finally recording it for real, as I stumbled through it on guitar showing the band, the great Robert Lighthouse said, "Oh, so like a Hungarian folk song?" I agreed, not knowing what he was talking about - I just know enough to trust him. Then Daniel Clarke came up with this incredible piano figure that really defines the song. Fantastic drumming by Brian Jones, nice keyboard textures from Patrick Warren (including the inspired choice of tubular bells), beautiful background vocals arranged and performed by Colin Killalea and then, years later, a fantastic string arrangement by Trey Pollard, featuring members of the Richmond Symphony, finished it off.

Track 2: The Water's Still Warm (Corey's favorite song)

Initially, this song was intended for my sister, Heidi's, debut solo album (which, to my great regret, I never finished after a number of recorded tracks were irredeemably lost. Thankfully, Heidi moved on from the absurdities of the music industry and, instead, is now a highly accomplished OBGYN). However, when we tracked basics for Heidi's album this song never felt right. I think I didn't communicate to the musicians just how far I wanted to lean into the Astral Weeks-ness of what I hoped it could be. My voice might be the opposite of Van's highly agile, nimble one, capable of fleet melodic runs (I tend to mutter slow, low approximations of melody!) so maybe the musicians questioned the appropriateness of the reference.

Then, in 2004, I read the National Book Award finalist memoir, The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home, by George Howe Colt: "Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children." I highly recommend it. Captures a feeling of wistful nostalgia that can sometimes invade even the present with its promise. Colt's book became my primary inspiration as I started revisiting this song.

When it came time to record the first basics for what became this album, I thought I'd take another crack. I'd written a new bridge, had some new thoughts on lyric based on The Big House and had a band perfectly suited for the jazz influenced rhythm section of Van's classic album - and they nailed it.

It turns out that, of all the songs I've ever written, I think this is Corey's favorite. Being married to a songwriter (at least to this one) means being subjected to listening to iteration after iteration of a song from writing/demoing/recording/mixing/mastering/vinyl test pressings etc. So, I don't think I've ever heard Corey choose to listen to my music - she's had enough! But, occasionally, I will hear her singing this one around the house. And the reason this one is special to her is that, somehow, while not being about our family, it manages to capture "summer's ephemeral pleasures”, the magical times we have come to experience as a young family now spending part of each summer in Cape Cod ourselves. And while we don't have a house that has been in the family for generations, we get to pretend that we do as we rent a perfectly-imperfect, century-old, red-shingled home (filled with mysterious creaky staircases, eccentrically positioned reading porches and odd alcoves) from a family that does. Some of our happiest times.

Track 3: Some Days

A bit about Robert Lighthouse on this album. As a young man, Robert came from Sweden to live with the Hopi people. Just showed up there one day in Arizona. He was welcomed and is now family.

His path led him to Washington, DC. where he settled for a while and where our paths crossed. The authenticity with which he plays was recognized by anyone who saw him (including people like Taj Mahal) and I knew that, if I was ever going to convey these songs in a way that felt real, I'd need his help.

The musicians I work with often fall into 2 categories - the instinctive and the studied. The rarest are the ones who, led by instinct to deep study, emerge on the other side of all they've learned, having absorbed it deep into their musical bones, still able to forget it all and turn themselves over to the music, egoless. Those are the ones who communicate the divine. This song has one of two slide solos on the album where Robert taps into that ever changing holy current and translates it for us as long as he can. Wild, never the same thing twice, and never an ounce of artifice.

For the last few years Robert has been playing often in Ukraine, often close to the front lines. He must bring such comfort with his music.

Also on this song is a perfect example of the distinctive, absurdly-deep pocket that only Brian Jones and Stewart Myers can create. For my money one of the all-time great rhythm sections. Most of their formative decade in Agents of Good Roots spent playing 250+ yearly, sometimes 3 hour long + nightly sets will do that. And there's really no substitute.

As for the lyric. I can proudly say that I've never taken my good fortune to find Corey for granted. I took time to be awed from the start and I remain so. Though it is certainly true that, "I've said such foolish things" hopefully I've gotten it right more.

Track 4: One Of the Lovely Few

Musically, there's nothing new about this song so the challenge was doing it right. Thankfully, Robert's fingerpicking approach, matched with Patrick Warren's experience playing with Dylan on some of his more country-blues influenced material (again with the killer rhythm section of Brian and Stewart) got us going on the right foot.

This song is straight non-fiction. On our second date, I broke the two of us into Washington, DC's Kennedy Center around 1am and we had our first kiss in the orchestra pit of the opera house - the chandelier slowly glimmered a crown over you. Pretty baller opening gambit? Sure - I think we can all agree. Criminal trespass on federal property? Perhaps that as well. Absolutely worth it.

Every now and then I'll babble out a word when I'm working on a melody (melodies almost always come first for me) and I won't have any idea where it came from. This time it was "empyrean." I had to google the definition but, sure enough, according to Merriam, "the highest heaven or heavenly sphere in ancient and medieval cosmology usually consisting of fire or light - the true and ultimate heavenly paradise.

I could have cowered... - that's certainly true. Depending on which basketball program you read, Corey is somewhere between 6'2" and 6'3". On our first date she wore heels and, I think, wound up around 7'4".

Early in our relationship, bouncing with Corey on her childhood trampoline in Alaska, I was surprised when she abruptly shouted "Hiya!" and did a spinning roundhouse kick that connected solidly with my skull, sent me flying off the trampoline and down a hill of pushki. Or there was the time playing in a swimming pool basketball tournament again a variety of MLS and World Cup team members that she drove her elbow through my forehead to the bone, hesitated exactly zero much, and I watched my then-fiancé dunk on me through a veil of my own face blood. Clint Mathis, dating Jennifer Capriati at the time, took me aside, "I can find you a nicer woman than that." I wasn't interested. Still, I could have cowered for sure.

Track 5: Near The River

Most of the basics for this record were tracked at Belmead plantation in Powhatan, VA - a giant gothic villa built for a confederate brigadier general on 2000 acres along the banks of the James River. Beginning in 1897, it was owned and run by St. Katharine Drexel as a school for Black students. Before I had my own studio, we were always searching for places to set up Stewart's gear and record. A film location scout let us know that there were some friendly nuns in Powhatan eager to rent their castle for whatever we could come up with so they could pay for incremental roof repairs and forestall the deterioration of the building. We became good buddies with the sisters and made a number of records there. What a place. Giant high ceilings, turrets, drums tracked in a library shared with the specter of a suicidal general, guitar amps on a stone porch which lent absolutely enormous reverbs to our tones, maybe 25 rooms in all - each with their own acoustic characteristics? I think we paid $200, lodging included.

To hear this song come to life in this particular space I think will always be one of the most rewarding experiences of my recording life. Again, this crazy deep pocket of a thundering Brian Jones and Stewart Myers. The second brilliant slide solo from Robert Lighthouse bouncing around that stone porch. It all felt eternal.

Patrick Warren would add a tiny pump organ that brought an outsized regality to the proceedings. Then Matt White (at the time just starting to get noticed by people like Justin Vernon) brought a group of his Fight the Big Bull compatriots over to my studio and they added the final majesty.

Why that vocal effect you might ask? Listen, I've never sung so high in my life as in that final chorus. I tried maybe 100 times to nail it. So, a confession - I'm trying to hide the strain in my voice behind that particular vocal treatment. Let me know if you can tell. I asked Robert Lighthouse, my arbiter of authenticity on this material, if he thought I pulled it off. He responded, "eh."  Dammit.

So, the lyric - every now and then the syllables and vowel sounds that come with the initial melody insist on sticking around. Any attempts to pull them toward another narrative, another rhyme scheme etc. are refuted. The subconscious has something it wants to say and that's how this one felt. Snatches of dreams, images I can place to one extent or another, but more just a sense of longing. I was traveling so much in those days. Half the year sometimes. Then 80, 90, 100-hour weeks recording when I was around. I missed Corey and wanted to be with her. That's my takeaway from this one.

Track 6: The Start of Love

I love the horn chorale on this one. Colin Killalea (currently in Vampire Weekend) had an idea for tone, so we drove up to the boarding school Woodberry Forest (I think it was either winter or summer break) and, with permission-ish, we took all of their woodwinds. The more busted the reeds or leaky the valves the better. Colin can play any instrument in any condition. He then on-the-spot put together this arrangement and we had all the atmosphere of the city corner described in the song. The other texture on this one is Brian Jones' glockenspiel. Threw it in his car as an afterthought on his way to the session. It wound up being a defining sound on this and The Water's Still Warm.

This one is about meeting Corey. I was out of college, my band had broken up, didn't know where I was headed. I picked up a job as a valet at Georgetown's 1789 restaurant. I figured it would do the trick for a few months. Turns out years. Still my favorite job I've ever had. Worked with a great group of guys (including famed investor Chris Sacca and Pulitzer-prize winner Brody Mullins), made friends I’m still in touch with to this day, wrote a ton of songs and met Corey.

It was a difficult approach for sure and I couldn't figure out how to do it. I'm 24, out of college, sweaty from sprinting around the block time and again, and this smiley tall girl with a buzz cut keeps getting dropped off in front of me after basketball practice. She's very cute but she's Georgetown's Rhodes Scholar candidate - likely heading places - and I am extremely broke and struggling to finish a solo album while working all kinds of odd jobs.

I found out she was an extraordinary writer from Bill Matory, one of my fellow valets. I cringe to reveal that my move was to ask her if she wanted to exchange short stories. I cringe even more to admit how certain I was that she would be so impressed with mine that my valet career would suddenly be more romantic-y and less red-flag-y. Instead, I received my story back from her, covered in red-ink, brilliant suggestions throughout, and a suuuuuper patronizing comment at the top to the effect of "keep trying, little boy." I was hooked.

On the final chorus "no one, no other" I grabbed a bunch of friends to sing along. And all three of our girls are in there. I do not have permission to use Lowen's (6 at the time she sang) vocal. "No, dad! I sound like a baby." But it was too cute not to include. Sorry Lowen.

Track 7: A Young You And I

I'm confused about the timeline of recording the basics for this song. The drums, as recorded, sound huge (which ultimately is not what we wanted - really had to fight that in the mix) which makes me think we recorded them at Belmead - but Robert is not on this song. So maybe we did record them at my studio years later. I have no idea. I really wanted this song to have harpsichord. The closest we could come was a direct out on a clavinet - the keyboard most famously used in a far-funkier manner by Stevie Wonder. Daniel Clarke did a great job approximating harpsichord on the song throwing some Van-y vibes over the rhythm section that was already heading there. Charles Arthur, another great instinctive musician with authentic feel, played guitar. Colin Killalea continued the Van Morrison approach with his horn arrangement (we discovered that we both have a soft spot for Van's 1991 album, Hymns to the Silence) then Trey Pollard did another beautiful string arrangement (again joined by members of the Richmond symphony).

I think that if Corey and I had been given, say, a high school writing prompt to describe the person we'd end up with, we'd both have missed the mark by no small margin. After the first moony year of infatuation, we spent the next breaking up quite a few times as we tried to resolve our differences. 90% her breaking up with me. But, I would respond, we're still friends right? And friends have dinner together and they could even see a movie together, right? We weren't often broken up for long. Anyway, this song was basically a response to that period of our relationship.

For each moment we waste in unholy complaint

we will be mercilessly judged

how ungrateful to taste this uncommon fate

then squander an extraordinary luck

Track 8: The House Where Love Grew

One of the most fun things about owning a studio and producing other artists is that we often get to bring in the artists and session musicians behind our favorite music. People like the great Mark Goldenberg (Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Ringo Starr etc. etc.), Los Lobos' David Hildalgo (Bob Dylan, Tom Waits), Tim Bradshaw (David Gray, MIA, John Mayer) to name just a handful. When they're here we can barrage them with questions:  How did you get that sound? Whose idea was that? What amp/ guitar/ pedal/ mic/ snare did you use? We have learned so much that way. Patrick Warren (Dylan, Waits, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen) was having none of it. "Secret family recipe", he'd say when pressed on the origins of a Tom Waits sound. "But are we close?" we'd ask, as we mic'd the upright with a SM57 through an old phonograph horn. Nothing. On top of that we were kind of shocked at just how little he'd play. A song would go by, and he'd touch his keyboard briefly 3 or 4 times. We'd say, "Do you want to add anything? Take another pass?" No, he did not. He also did something I had never seen before (or since) which is that he sort of pre-mixed himself. If he thought the part he was playing should be low in the mix he'd give us so little level that the signal to noise ratio would all but prohibit us ever featuring it hotter in the mix than he intended it to be. We got along ok but, when he left, I'll admit that we were a little bummed, "Who was that guy? Making all these decisions for us?" Turns out, with the benefit of hindsight, he was a guy who knew exactly what he was doing. Every note was perfect. We didn't mute anything at all that he played. Everything lived perfectly in the mix.

I'm a little afraid to show him this one though. When he played on it, he was responding to drums, acoustic guitar, bass and I wound up muting all of that. Just let Patrick's piano wander drifting, unbound to anything else. His tibia organ comes in on the second verse. What a sound that is. He's known as the master of the chamberlain for good reason. Some chamberlain harp sneaks in on the bridge.

And then, my friends, Colin Killalea comes in sounding like Ornette Coleman. Off-the-charts lyrical, melodic.  I think on one of those busted horns we borrowed from Woodberry? Maybe his own. I can't remember. But, if you listen to nothing else on this album, listen to Colin's solo on this track. It’s perfect.

This song is about the bittersweet moments of moving on from a time and place in your life you recognize were something special. Even if you know the future could be/should be bright, still there's a sadness there. When I met Corey, I was living with my buddy, the brilliant Doug Derryberry in Arlington, VA. Sometimes John Alagia lived with us too. They were doing a lot of work with the Dave Matthews Band in those days and our basement often rang with the mixes of live DMB or with hours and hours of Doug practicing for his new (at the time) gig as Bruce Hornsby's guitarist. My bedroom closet was filled with John's gold and platinum albums from working with Dave and others. It was a fun atmosphere to be around, and Doug and John showed me that this (music) was actually a thing people could do - even earn a living at. Add falling in love to all of that. Packing up to move from that house certainly brought about mixed feelings.

One of the healthiest things about my relationship with Corey was just the confidence we had in its underlying strength. So, when I thought it was time for me to move to NYC to pursue my music or she chose to move to Maine to focus on her photography there was never any thought that it meant anything negative with regards to our relationship. We just encouraged each other and were happy for the other each time one of us found something exciting to pursue. We knew we'd see each other soon and nothing about the way we felt would change in the interim.

Track 9: When You Find a Good Woman

This song opens with Patrick Warren's optigan samples. An optigan is an insane instrument from the 1970's (a portmanteau of optical organ). It played optical acetate discs (a little bit like microfiche) of various samples that played nice with each other with the idea that it would make it easier for amateurs to play fuller arrangements for, say, a home Christmas sing along.

One of the discs was called The Joyous Sounds of Christmas another was simply called Movin! They were made by a subsidiary of Mattel and were intended as toys. Very cool toys quickly embraced by some of my favorite musicians including Mark Linkous - Sparklehorse.

I was a giant fan of Sparklehorse and one of my proudest achievements was getting Mark to agree to produce me. For the (honestly) low price of $12k. I just couldn’t come up with it. So, I started without him always hoping to bring him in later. But a promised Warner Bros. production gig fell through, then a publishing deal got caught up in some private equity nonsense etc. etc. and then he passed away. A big loss for American music and all those who cared about him. I think of this little optigan intro as a nod to an alternate universe version of the album where Mark had joined on.

One day you're joined by another,

another, then one more besides

She's their mother and more is uncovered

from the impossible well that she hides

The greatest gift I could have ever given my children is their mother. I entered this relationship under the delirious assumption we were roughly equals. I've grown steadily more and more deferential over the years as the error of that initial impression has been made increasingly clear. One of my favorite party tricks, when the girls were younger, was to invite one of them over to a conversation I might be having and ask, "Who was right about that - me or mom?" Devoid of subject or context. Without hesitation each girl would confidentially assert, "Mom!" and toddle off. When it comes to parenthood, it's less a partnership and more of a master / awed apprentice relationship. Every situation she knows what to do. And, man, do they love her. It's not uncommon to walk into our bedroom and find all three girls piled happily on top of Corey - even now, all combined 15' + tall of them, a teen, a pre-teen and a maniacal 7-year-old all just want to be near her.

I'm probably reaching for something like Nick Drake with this one. Try as you might, you can't get particularly close to the greats. They found their own approach to melody, to harmony, even though they have the same 12 notes as the rest of us. Mystifying really. That's Robert again playing (I believe) Stewart's vintage Epiphone Texan - not that far away serial-number-wise from Paul McCartney's. It's my favorite guitar. I don’t always fall for the everything-vintage-is-better line of thinking. But it's hard to argue with guitars and microphones somehow. Tough not to believe something magic gets imparted and absorbed through the years. I sang most of this album on a late 50's Sony C37a. My favorite mic. Sinatra's and Nat King Cole's too. (I keep saying that but I can't find my source - entirely possible I'm wrong but maybe you can just let me have it?) Must be pretty fun to be able to sing the way those guys could.

A decision long gone

And still I am grateful

You knew, you understood

We are something good

We were standing on a tarmac in Alaska when Corey said we were something good. She said it so calmly and confidently that, even if I hadn't already believed it, I would have been converted on the spot. I'm glad this song took decades to finish because it gives me an opportunity to unequivocally agree - with years of evidence for our shared belief.

Track 11: Miracle

This, fittingly, was one of the last songs to have its basics recorded. Jesse Harper on treated acoustic, Daniel Clarke on piano-recorded-through-a-phonograph horn. Stewart Myers with a rare appearance on upright bass (I actually don't think he believes me that it's him on the upright but I'm here to tell you it was). I think that's an optigan organ and bells that sneak in, out of time, on the bridge. Obviously influenced by some of the Tom Waits album, Mule Variations. A loose and shaggy piano ballad. A love song.

So, this whole album was recorded without a click track. Very, very rare these days. And that's a shame. You need amazing musicians to really pull it off. But, particularly when the musicians are familiar with each other, there's a communication, almost like a murmuration, that allows another level of expression, of humanity. When are we going to sing that melody/ play that phrase? Not when the computer tells us to with the sound of an insistent woodblock. Whenever it feels right - to all of us there in the room making music, together.

Love is a miracle. Every little thing that had to conspire to get a girl from Alaska together with a valet in DC - each a tiny miracle (the universe had tried once before - we learned years later that, at my sisters Columbia University graduation dinner, we were seated a few tables away from Corey and her family celebrating her sister's Barnard graduation). Everything that has happened since. Most of all, our girls. All three, miracles.

I'm grateful for it all. Is it too much to ask for just one more?