Album Notes

COMPOSING "PLACE IN THE SUN"

In the summer of ’93 I started writing songs on my acoustic guitar and adding lyrics. I gradually started thinking of soloing lines to go with them. I was still in high school, so it wasn’t until the next spring that I had 9 songs that I was eager to record at a professional studio.

I found a local recording musician in Peterborough, Ken LaRoche who recorded with “Do’ah” for a number of years. He was no longer in the band and was not doing too well financially. When I got the go-ahead to do the album from my dad (who funded the project) I paid Mr. LaRoche a handsome sum of $750.00 for the entire album. His fee was quite reasonable – only 25 dollars an hour.

Each one of the songs I had written had a unique message of it’s own. “Place in the Sun,” for instance, I thought of when my older brother told me “If you want to find a place in the sun, you have to leave the shade of the family tree." I believed it full heartedly then, but not as much now – as having good connections with your family is considered a healthy and challenging feat these days. If you can do it, you are far better off.

Another title “Karen” was one I wrote for a love of mine who I feel now was second to the real love of my life -neither of which I ended up marrying. That’s life.

“Be A Faithful Building Block” was probably the first of the songs I composed – in my tenth grade year at Conval High School, Peterborough, NH. It was a time when was I pretty big into recycling and the environment. I wrote it because the only environmental song I had heard was from Tom Leher which was “Pollution” and he seemed to be making fun of the issue.

“Pleasure and Pain” came from the idea that we humans experience the opposites of pleasure and pain daily –cleaving to the former and running away from the latter. (Listening to a tape of Yogi Amrit Desai gave me the idea).

“Reminiscence” I came up with from dwelling on memories of “toddlerhood” – before any schooling my mom taking me to various places, and not having any responsibilities - such a short and rare time in one’s life, really.

“Way Of Life” was something I had my mom in mind, but differently – she always seemed to be telling me to do things but not doing them herself. She certainly motivated me to try new things in life but I had to write the song to push back and say “But I wanna see the life in your way.”

Finally, “In My Dream” was a song to state how I felt that, in dreams, we could do more than we could in real life. Entering the dream state then, for me, was far more interesting and exciting than the everyday world – which I felt was far too mundane.

- Andrew Wyndham, April 4, 2009