You know the feeling. You’re in your car, a tune comes on the radio and instantly you’re transported. You feel, taste and smell everything from twenty or thirty years ago. That’s music’s magic. Even though these songs are new to you maybe they’ll conjure up some memory or emotion. I recorded Lonely (my tribute to Roy Orbison) and Run It to the End in 2000 and The Night New Orleans Drowned (dedicated to New Orleans cabbie, Buddy Love) in 2006. After all the tunes were “in the can” it took me months to get cover photos and liner notes. A Procrastinator? That’s me! All through those years however, these and other songs were written; some recorded, some ignored, one or two a future Grammy winner. My rice scarred buddy, Barney Fletcher, inspired Next-Ex Wife one cold June day in Maine. Two un-named friends inspired Someday He’ll Say He Loves Me. Mid-Life Crisis, coincided with receipt of an unsolicited AARP card. The title song, When I Pick Up My Guitar, describes the fantasy: when I’m playing or singing the real world fades and I’m a Rock Star, a Folkie or Tony Bennett. Some of the lyrics I’ve lived, some I’ve not. But I’ve felt love lost (Nowhere, All Around; Long Walk off a Short Pier; Blue Sundown Over Baja) and love found (Sweet Thing You and A Guy Like Me.) Luckily, every time I look at my PhD in L.O.V.E., Esther, I Fall in Love Once Again. If I have any Confession to make it’s that Favorite Songs is a mini autobiography in three verses and Last Song contains my epitaph. My sincerest hope is that from one of my songs you “Take the melody and words to light your way.” My first CD, Home In Arizona, was released in 2002 and contains 12 songs all about Arizona.