Musically, I am coming from a wide variety of influences; rock and roll, blues, country, jazz, rhythm and blues, classical, dixieland, Broadway musicals, John Phillips Souza marches, folk, reggae and religious music, from chant to Christmas carols. But the predominant thread running through this record seems to be the blues. And so I have chosen this collection of songs. Some are more than ten years old, some written as recently as late 1996. I had to make this record so that I could release these songs from within, thereby making room for new ones, kind of like unblocking a log jam. There are many more songs that have been waiting to come out and now they'll be able to.

Except for "Stone Crazy", a song I wrote on a Bonnie Raitt/Little Feat tour in 1973, I didn't take song writing seriously until I was almost forty years old because I didn't feel the need to write music. I thought playing the bass was enough. Looking back, I was probably more frustrated than I realized, using only a small part of my God-given talent. Deepak Chopra, in his book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Creativity, talks about the Law of Dharma, says: "The Law of Dharma says that every human being has a unique talent. You have a talent that is unique in its expression, so unique that there's no one else alive on this planet that has that talent, or the expression of that talent. This means that there's one thing you can do, and one way of doing it, that is better than anyone else on this entire planet."

I was fortunate to realize at age twenty three that music was my Dharma, but didn't realize that by playing the bass, my journey was just beginning. And as I continued to feel incomplete, I continued to search and began to write down my feelings in the form of poetry, or lyrics. Once I began that process, I unlocked something inside me and it wasn't long before I started putting music to the lyrics. Then I had to deal with the fear; the fear stemming from questions like, "Are these songs good, are these songs good enough, am I good enough?". And that brought me to the conclusion that I am who I am, unique unto myself, unlike anyone else on the planet, and that's good enough.

As long as I am the best I can be, do the best I can do, I am fulfilling my Dharma. And so this record represents that life-long struggle; the search for the truth within. As Winston Chuchill once said, 'This may not be the beginning of the end, but it is The End of the Beginning.'