Frequently Asked Questions

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Gimlet is the name of the  road I grew up on.  I got my first guitar there at fourteen, a fender electric model called a Music Master and a Fender Vibro Champ amp.   My Father drove me down to Forbes Music in Florence, Alabama.   I spent many hours leanring all the parts to Beatles songs and other classic rock favorites.    Eventually, I started writing my own tunes.   I had two very inexpensive cassette tape recorders and would record a guitar track on one recorder and then bounce it to the second tape recorder with another guitar or vocal.  After a few bounces the tape saturation made everything sound wonderful!     The beauty of the analog world was that you could push an electric guitar volume and voice to get some really cool distortion.    Owning a real multi-track recorder was not in my budget.  This was the 1970’s.     So the “Gimlet Project” is really a nod to that time.   My attempt to come full circle with recording my own orginal songs inspired by greats of classic rock.   Most of the songs were written over the last fifteen years.   I set up a small home studio on my Mac using Logic Pro.

I worked with Ken Royster at Direct Image here in Nashville.   He arranged for some fantastic musicians. Prior to the studio sessions, I did a lot of pre-production work at home using Logic Pro.  This allowed me to get all my ideas and arrangements in place.   I play guitar and bass.    I don’t play drums or keyboards, but use Logic Pro to program MIDI keyboard and orchestra ideas and to develop drum patterns.  So I came to the studio process with a pretty complete map of what I wanted.   

The basic arrangements stayed pretty close to my demos, but the musicians were very keen to add ideas and try out different approaches.     It was important to me that I stayed true to my vision of the song, but at the same time I needed to be open to new approaches that seasoned musicians could offer.    Dave Francis, who plays bass on all the studio tracks did the charting.    He was diligent about listening to my demos so that really helped in the communication process.    For parts like guitar or keyboard solos, they created totally new approaches that were well beyond anything I could have come up with.     At first it was a bit intimidating.   If you like the idea, great, but how do you tell someone who has played on a bunch of hit songs, I don’t like that!  Musically, it’s a big leap beyond what I am capable of creating in my home studio.    In the end, I think we struck a really good balance  and my producer, Ken,  really helped with that.      

Breath and Flight of the Fireflies are  home demos where I play or program all the instruments myself. They were mixed and mastered in the studio.    For the rest of the songs I provided a few small  parts  from my home recordings, mainly sound effects.

Any place I can find them!     I will usually get a melody or chord structure that sticks in my head for a few days and a lyric will pop up to match the music.    Sometimes, it’s while I’m playing a guitar and other times, it’s just there in my head and I have to pick up the guitar to get the idea fleshed out. Music first, I seldom come up with lyrics  or an idea I want to write a song about first.    

I have a lot of influences and don’t feel tied to one genre of music.    In Nashville, they say 3 chords and the truth.  That’s great, but what if you want to paint a surrealistic picture with lyrics?    I’m a fan of many genres  of music, so I tend to use a lot of different influences to come up with songs and lyrics.     A few songs are from personal experiences from my youth, such as Gimlet Road,  Catechism Suite, Roberta’s Back Yard and Salad Days.

 I got the idea for Five Minutes to Midnight after reading an article with Stephen Hawking talking about the Doomsday Clock.  It was originally written with him as the main character while he was still alive.   I updated some of the lyrics for this recording to make it more accessible, so Elon is now that central figure.    The last line "swear by the green grass of Spring that we won't forget"  is from the World War I poem,  Aftermath, by Siegfried Sassoon.   Mike Rojas, who plays keyboards and organ on all the tracks came up with a very nice solo on the harpsichord and piano.     Jon Conley provided the excellent slide guitar work.

Gimlet Road is about my teenage friend Mike and I.   We  worked on the farm by day and got into all sorts of mischief at night, including stealing watermelons and  whiskey from his parent's liquor cabinet.     We also loved listening to The Doors.    Regardless of how  late we stayed up, there was always work to be done the next day unless it rained!   It's 10 chords and the truth ;)    Adam Cunningham provided killer background vocals on this and other songs.

Roberta, in Roberta's Back Yard, was my aunt.     I stayed at her house during the day and on school holidays.    I was four or five and those were the days when you were turned loose outside to play until it was time to eat.    We always had a great time talking.  I miss her!   John Willis provided an amazing acoustic solo.   I wanted to keep the song simple musically, and didn't think we needed electric guitar and drums, and figure we could always remove it later.   Kelly Back added a perfect  complement to the song that reminded me of  George Harrison's  guitar  style.    It weaves perfectly with the acoustic guitar in a beautiful and subtle way.   Tommy Harden provided some cool drum patterns that fit well with the lyrics.

Salad Days is about my time living in a frat house in college.      Our favorite pastime, after several beers, was riding a folded metal chair down the steps.    We all survived!   It has a definite Rolling Stones vibe.    I read where Mick Jagger would bring in background singers after the track was mostly completed, so wanted to add something like that here.     In a one hour session, Vicki Hampton, who provided the background vocals, and a soulful call and response on the outro,  really took the song to another level.  

Grounded is an example of something more ethereal.   It's full of a lot of biblical imagery from Revelations.    It was inspired by a story of a  death row inmate's last night.     I went through a dozen rewrites and in the end left  it more open to listener interpretation.    I like songs that can mean different things to different people.   A lot of influence musically comes from  Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.   It's a  great album to listen to and  interpret.   Imagining what another well known artist would do with this song idea is one device I use a lot.     I'd love to hear Chris Stapleton singing this one.

Eileen is about a reality TV show character with an overbearing mother.    I truly hope her life ends up better than that of the character in my song!    Definitely a John Lennon, Beatles vibe, with a sort of dark humor.

You Rescued Me is dedicated to my wonderful wife!    Enjoy the reggae!    

1939 World’s Fair came from an article I read about the San Francisco World’s Fair Expo on the eve of World War II.   All the people and visuals as well as the sounds came from  descriptions I read in that one article.     I had read about John Lennon writing Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite from an old circus poster, so decided to go down that path.   It was one of my favorite songs to write and assembling the sound collage in the middle was a lot of fun.  It’s sort of Beach Boys and Beatles mashup that would have been done in the psychedelic period.    

Breath is a short  intro to Catechism Suite signifying birth into the world.    

Catechism Suite is about growing up Catholic.    It's three songs in one.   In the first part,  I imagined my baptism.    The second part is about  growing up with loving parents, and going to Catholic school.  The last part is a nod to my Uncle Jim who was a priest.   We called him Father Jim.   He loved baseball and was a player and later a coach at Father Ryan High here in Nashville.     That's him reading scripture in the song,  from an old cassette recording I had.   The baseball diamond is a metaphor for life.      What will we see rounding third and going home?   

Paint the World is  about longing for a better world and glimpsing it in nature.    Two years ago I hike the entire Appalachian Trail.   Plenty of time to think!   Verse two is  a personal ode to our Tortie cat that we lost after twenty years.     Heinlein had a book about cat who was always looking for the door to summer.    For the listener it might be someone they've lost .   Certainly a Beatles influence here with more of John Lennon type anthem at work in the chorus.  Sort  of "imagine... painting the world in better light".      It's an end cap to Five Minutes to Midnight in that we need to think and see things from a different perspective to work out our problems.   In several songs I highlight a struggle to remain optimistic in the face of troubled times.   I don't think our generation is unique in that sense.   That's the story of the human race.    We are in constant need of changing the way we think about things.

Flight of the FIreflies takes us into the summer world of the lighting bugs.     It's  an electronic creation  from my home studio using Apple Drums and other MIDI plug ins in addition to some guitar and bass at the end.     It's really part two of Paint The World.

Somewhat.   The last four songs (Breath, Catechism Suite, Paint the World, Flight of the Fireflies)  are in keys that feed one into the other.    In the world of streaming this probably won’t be noticed by most people.  I still think in terms of vinyl like Abbey Road side 2!     Flight of the Fireflies starts with the piano fade out from  Paint the World and  has a synth part that repeats the notes that started out in Breath.    I wanted a longer piece of music for people who still enjoy listening to an entire album or CD.  

Hands down it was You Rescued Me.      The musicians all smiled when I played the demo with a reggae beat.      I don’t think they get an opportunity to do that too often in Nashville!