Album Notes

Producer's Notes:

In a town far away (Philly), Lisa Christian and I first met in Summer
1985, when I was just about 20 and she was closing in on her 18th
birthday. I was playing jazz four nights a week in a restaurant bar
where she worked downstairs in the kitchen. I forget how we met, but we
wound up picking together and she was astounded that a big pro jazz
musician (such as I was) knew even more Hank Williams songs than she
did. I was amazed that a 17 year old girl could sing Hank Sr the real
way. She didn’t affect anything or put on a series of mannerisms. She
sang the songs like just what they were, and it was staggering.

(Back then a lot of my friendships were based on who wanted to play
music until we all fell asleep.)

Cut to years later, and I’m playing Mobile with my trio, and who shows
up but Lisa. I recognized her immediately, although it had been 21
years since I last saw her. I invited her to cut a song with my trio,
which she did (and sang her ass off), and she enjoyed it enough to ask
if I’d put an album together for her. I said I would, but we had to
use my trio with Hunter Baldwin engineering, and that I had a great
idea about what kind of material (she didn’t want to write just for the
sake of having stuff to record) we should do. She went for it.

We decided we’d let Shakira entertain the young folks and stick to
songs that required a little more life experience. Not that we wanted
everything to be a downer -- far from -- but that we wanted everything
to sound like it was coming from someone who was grownup enough to have
balanced a checkbook.

So we cut this, Lisa singing lead vocals live with the band, then
putting her overdubs on whenever I had a second guitar or David had a
tambourine or something. The backround singing was done with all three
girls on one mic. It was lo-tech, and Hunter Baldwin got it right.

We mostly stayed away from recording anything that had been anyone’s
biggest hit (save for “Long Black Veil”), and most of the songs were
pre-1980. We ventured into modern times to shine some new light on two
album cuts that deserved more attention than they ever got (Wreckless
Eric’s “Broken Doll” and Dave Alvin’s “Why Did She Stay With Him”) and
a Carlene Carter single, “Unbreakble Heart”, which was written by Tom
Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench as a kind of salute to my erstwhile pal
Joey Spampinato.

To Major Lance, Johnny Paycheck, Little Milton, John Hartford, Charlie
Rich, and Elvis Presley, thanks for making more great records after
that first hit.

Lisa is the goods. She’s a real singer and musician. No vocals were
pitch-corrected. This is some people playing in a room, the way Little
Milton did it. The way The Band did it. And that’s good enough.

Lisa -- just let me know when you wanna do this again. I loved every
minute of it. Thanks for this disc. It was my joy to make it with
you.

I am obliged to the following generous people: Wade, Billy, Heather,
Eddie, and the amazing Leslie. A tip of the hat to Jamie Harford. A
special thanks to Chris and David, my brothers in music, and to my
beautiful wife, Skye. Oh yeah -- thanks Ed for turning me onto “SOS”
back in '92.

Your ol' pal --
Skip Heller
North Hollywood, CA