Album Notes

So anyway, it was my birthday, March 2009. The night before Red and I went to see Barry McGuire and John York play their concert show “Trippin’ the Sixties,” and today Barry was talking at the Cup O’Joy in Green Bay for people interested in hearing the rest of his story.
For two hours, Barry talked about the choices he’d made and about being ready for whatever God wants you to do. “Do you think you can do that for just this moment? Great. OK. Now how about this moment? And now this one?”
It had been five years since I picked up the guitar and tried writing a tune. But I thought I could pick up the guitar and write for a moment. So that night I tried. In his show Barry had written about how he loved the basic sound of the G and C chords trading places with each other. I knew how he felt: I rocked a G and a C and then a G and then a C.
Then I started singing. A few weeks earlier I’d laughed at a hokey 1999 movie called “Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD.” At one point Nick’s girl had said, “Thank God, I thought you were dead.” “I was,” the hero replied. “But now I’m better.” There was the song.
“I was dead and gone, but now I’m better ... ”
Over the next month the 12 songs in this collection came out. Not only was I writing again, but at a pace I hadn’t seen ever. I kept them simple, folksy, hopefully with a bit of a sixties feel.
“I’m whole again, and back where I belong.”