Album Notes

This collection was hastily compiled back in 1998 for a cassette to be sold at a show opening for Patty Loveless in my hometown, Dunkirk, NY. Back then I was a staff songwriter at King Lizard Music, and while I sure-as-hell wanted to be an "artist" I wasn't out on the road playing much. I really wasn't playing at all. But I had cut a bunch of masters with Thom McHugh. Thom had written some big songs and he and Liz Rose decided they would go into business trying to make me a star...and, as they say no good deed goes unpunished. At the time the Chautauqua County fair called me to open for Ms Loveless, Thom and I had a falling out, My then-Manager and I had just parted company, and King Lizard was about to close it's doors.
Things were in a real mess.
But the thought of getting to play in my home town before a big crowd, sounded like a no-brainer, despite the fact that the fair paid little and bringing up a band from Nashville would cost a lot.
We'd just sell merchandise and make our money back, right?
Life is about taking chances. So Liz Rose and her partner Kingsley Brock picked out their favorite songs of mine and had a couple hundred copies of then printed up....
And in the twenty minutes we had between my set and Patty Loveless' we sold enough cassette copies of "All Things Texan" to pay for the band, the van, and maybe a pizza or two.