This is not an album about my own mortality. Let’s say it’s about impermanence. That sounds much more listenable.

And I’m fine with moving on at some point. But I have lately been writing songs about the delicate and transient nature of all of it - my own life, the planet, our links to one another. Mostly celebrating, sometimes wistful.

This is also the other half of the two-three years that produced arch types of the alpaca lips - that’s the more produced, electric album, and this one got the more acoustic, singer-songwritery songs, that I can (mostly) play solo and that can scale down to just a guitar and vocal pretty well.

I also discovered that I’m still thinking about albums as having “sides,” because the first five songs of this collection hang together, and the remaining six songs do as well, in a different way. I don’t know how you want to manage that in your personal listening environment, but at least now you’ve been notified.

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Speaking of the exception, “through the halls of green” is not particularly singer-songwritery in my mind, but it came after arch types was published, so it goes here. Many thanks to Oren Fisher for creating it with me - he’s a joy to work with and I learned a lot.

Thanks to Jacinta Whitcome for her crystalline vocals on “sweet relief” - she’s such a pleasure to sing with, and I hope you’ll hear more collaborations from us.

Thanks to Clara Weber for her three-word vocal track on “gone.” “notes from Stella” would probably be better in her voice. She also gave me pointers on graphic design for the cover.

I played the rest of the instruments, sang the rest of the vocals, recorded, mixed, remixed, tweaked endlessly, and made the graphics.

A further thanks to Leah West and her creation, the Ithaca Songwriters group, and to all the supportive folks who made a nice space for songwriting. Seveeral of these songs originated in that group and it’s been a general inspiration for me in the last couple of years.

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