Album Notes

One day I was sitting with my friend Coral Cadman (whose singing, while we're on the subject, adds so much to this album) in the cottonwood grove by the stream that ran near her trailer in Placitas, New Mexico. When I asked how she was doing, she said, "Not bad at all. I'm only semi-blue." We laughed pretty hard at that. Then I suggested we each write a song using the phrase "semi-blue," and we did. Coral's version is terrific, by the way. But it's not on this record.
Through Coral I met producer/songwriter/musician Neill Furio in the summer of 2000. Though I lived in New Mexico, and Neill lived in New York City, I was eager to make an album, and I liked Neill's ideas a lot. He believed in settings that let the music breathe. Soon we began recording a bunch of my songs live in engineer Scott Anthony's living room. Various overdubs were added gradually (mostly by Neill), and "Semi-Blue" was born after three years of Neill insisting we push it just a little further.....
On Semi-Blue I sing about finding hope and possibility even when faced with dark circumstances. That message makes a lot of sense to me, for I've often found writing songs to be a unique way of transforming pain into pleasure. I call that voodoo the alchemy of song. It seems to work great on listeners.
Neill's made a timeless kind of acoustic record here. He says it's a cross between Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man and Joni Mitchell's Hejira (which I guess would make me a kind of honorary Canadian). Voices, guitar, Neill's gorgeous bass, percussion. Poetic lyrics and sweet melodies. Personal exploration and cultural portraiture. Politics and philosophy. A kind of moody song cycle with a strong point of view. There's not much like it out there. I'm proud of what we did, and I'll bet you'll like it too.