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Originally planned as an EP, this album contains songs inspired by my move to the west coast. You could think of it as the sequel to "California," from my previous album. The entire work is thematically bound by the concept of departure and borrows imagery from the Southwestern US. It is also a departure in my writing technique. When I arrived in California with only my acoustic guitar, I realized that the Kill the Painter material wasn't especially suited to a singer/songwriter format, and I would need a band again if I wanted to play live. So I began writing songs by focusing on their core components--lyrics and melody. The result is my most concise and portable body of work to date.
So far, I've written twelve songs and recorded preliminary demos for each one. The demo-recording process represents another shift in my writing technique. In the past, I recorded music in short segments as I wrote it and then pasted them all together, which resulted in a colorful but fragmented collage of textures. This time I've worked out all the technicalities of song structure and tempo during the demo stage, and now I'm ready to re-record a final version in a single pass, having had the opportunity to listen to and critique the early material. I feel this will give the master recordings a more natural, cohesive, and dynamic feel.
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