My dearest love, Olivia, sweet child, you are too young now to understand any of these songs even as you may have heard some of them in your distant past. You are three years old at this moment and you say that you like daddy’s music when you hear a song. Well, you are also a very sweet young girl who is sensitive to the feelings of others. Everyone loves you for that. Honestly, one day you may or may not like my music and that’s ok. See, I may or may not be there as you read this. I am writing this so that when you are ready, you will open this disc and read this inset, listen to the music and know your daddy. You will know not the man who cooked for you, cleaned you up, got you ready for school, who played with you, picked you up when you fell, who scolded you or showered you with a hundred thousand hugs and kisses, no, you will know the man inside of me. Not your daddy, but some of the thoughts, feelings and experiences that make me who I am. You are the inspiration for this album and all my work. This album will be part of three projects that will represent the best music I’ve written in the last twenty-five years. Please understand that before you, I have never finished anything creative in my life besides some poems and mostly dreams. I’ve always opted instead to stay complacent with half-baked ideas, half-written songs, stories and the once in a while jam session with an acoustic guitar, yelling into a night sky, hollering into world that is too busy to listen to someone with amateur level skills. I’ve always used my relationships, my education and career as excuses not to finish my work. All in all, those excuses simply masked my lifelong fear of not being a good enough. Well, I don’t care about that fear any longer. I have put all of myself into the composition and performances, holding back nothing. I hope you feel I am good enough for at least one of these songs and at least one of them resonates with you. Just in case you struggle to understand why I made this music, and why I decided to go in a direction for the music or performance (trust me there are a few questionable decisions), I’m going to explain so you may better understand me. Of course, there are many different interpretations of some of these lyrics, but I’m trying to be as honest as I can. Even sometimes though, when being honest, we don’t know that we’re lying through omission. So I’ll focus on just my main thought process behind the music and leave it at that. But there certainly are other interpretations I built into the lyrics on purpose. I love you Livie. I hope when you read this you are happy, healthy and that I am right next to you laughing about how dumb this is. LIBERALITY This isn’t a song on the album but I wanted to explain why I chose this word for the title. In the literal definition of the word…it’s to be free of prejudice. To be open to new ideas. In my opinion, the only ones who can do that are children. I think it’s a travesty that liberality seems to be one of the first things to be driven out as they grow. The idea of the album cover is to take the children who still have some liberality and get the hell out of here before the whole world blows itself up with its own anger and fear. Honestly, I’m still filled with both fear and anger and live mostly without liberality, though I try. I’m not quite sure why I’m driving the bus…except to say that maybe I’ll sacrifice myself along the way to ensure the survival of some innocence from our world. I would sacrifice my life too. I have waiting decades for the opportunity to sacrifice myself to a cause greater than me. Then I had you. Then everything in my life became about sacrificing to make the world better for you. Love will do that, and my sweet, I have never found a feeling more profound or pure than simply seeing the smile on your face, hearing your laughter, being impressed with your ideas, and cuddling up to you on a rainy day. You have brought happiness to a ruined man by simply being who you are. I owe you everything for that. APATHY This song was conceived when I lived at 460 Prentis St. For the life of me I can’t remember the apartment number but I was on the third floor on the northwest corner. It was 1999. It was my favorite song to literally bang out on a guitar until the point that I was exhausted. There was a lot of self-hatred driving this song because it’s about seeing something wrong and not doing anything to change it. I saw a lot of wrong back then. I still do, but the homelessness I witnessed was rampant. Every day I saw people hungry, abused, on drugs and hanging on the edge. And yet on the other side I saw the hopefulness of the people engaging in the pursuit of a higher education like myself. I felt that I should be doing something to help but I was so involved in drowning my own pain, fear and many distractions that I did nothing. Now I know that you only need two things, you need to care enough about something to get motivated and you need the courage to try and change it. You don’t need to have the answers. If apathy becomes the norm instead of the exception then goodness will fail and kindness will become an oddity. That’s really what the breakdown of the rhythm section is about…that the trend of callousness needs to be broken. I wish I could say that I feel we as a people will succeed in countering apathy. The outro is a statement to the power of apathy to bring us back to our preferred method of distraction, whatever that may be. The music of the outro is intended to sound the way one may feel when standing up too quickly when drunk and the room is spinning out of control. I used your baby percussion instruments for the first version of this song and only had an acoustic guitar and piano for all the instrumentals. This song is built on that foundation so if you listen closely, you might hear your baby tambourine and maracas. YOU'RE RUNNING Ok, this song was written in 2015, so it’s a recent song. The theme underneath it is about running away from your problems. But it’s directed at time after my divorce from your mom when I learned of an exotic dancer who, after spending some time with one night at a club, helped provide me with a moment of clarity. I was lonely, I’m not making excuses, and so I went to a club. While there, with her sitting on my lap naked, this beautiful young woman was already aged with experience. When I saw the dereliction of her body, I understood that running takes its toll. In that moment I felt my oldest sister’s plight when she had run away to Hawaii. I felt my brother when he turned to drugs and crime. Your aunt J’s running away from her own emotions. I was reminded of my own stint running away to Florida and my own battle with alcohol medication. There are many of us in life who are only a string of bad luck away from disaster. Once that disaster happens, and it often happens because of our own decisions, we can find ourselves running instead of facing it. In a moment of looking into this dancer’s eyes, I saw a sunset. In that sunset, I had the vision of her running away from it for she only lived her life at night, away from the scrutiny and honesty of the daylight. This song was born in that moment. The piercing guitars are my musical take on the “green flash”, that split moment when sometimes watching the sun set, that a wideset blast of light will change the sun’s color as it dips below the horizon. SAY YOU LOVE ME This is the most political song on the album without any doubt and was inspired by the Flint Water Tragedy that really started in 2014 but didn’t make its way to widespread media reporting as a crisis until 2016. It’s simply unbelievable to me that the accountants, politicians, “running” the state of Michigan, including the governor, made criminal decisions that poisoned a generation and no one was prosecuted. This song is about all politicians who believe they are above the people, the ones who use their power against the people for whom they should serve. This song is about desperately trying to stay under control despite the sheer amount of anger lurking just beneath the surface. I know it won’t be a popular song because it’s not terribly easy to listen to. The drums are like gunshots. There are murmurs of the masses in the background. It’s not supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be uncomfortable. Just imagine having lead poisoning. TEAR IT UP The bulk of this song was one of my first pieces ever written for guitar. I didn’t have the chorus written back then, just the verses and they were poorly written as well. But the concept was there, all the way back in 1994: that my life was complacent, as though I achieved a goal without achieving a goal. And I was wondering what goal I was hoping to achieve. Sure, there are examples of people working hard and “making it”. But is making it getting a house where you are indebted to a bank, having a job where you’re subservient to an unfeeling corporate culture, where you have a sports car but only drive it back and forth to work? Is having stuff “making it”. Have anyone truly earned our freedom? Will I? Sometimes we’re all way too clean was added later. And the chorus, Tear It Up. What am I talking about tearing up? The social contract to be blunt. Well, the illusion of it anyway. Our society is built around an illusion of democracy, inclusiveness and freedom. But in reality we all sacrifice some of our freedoms in exchange for state protection and social benefits. What happens when the sum of the sacrifice becomes greater than the reward for the social cooperation? Well, revolution. History is repleat with examples. We’ve been seeing it in France over the last few years, the recent Occupy movement, the WTO protests, the riots in Argentine in 2001. It is a travesty of justice for any government or class of people to take more than they give back to the people. When it happens, and happens more often than not, we need to step in and tear it up. Just be there. Tear it up. Make something new. VANQUISH IT LOUD I originally wrote the first draft lyrics back in 2000 after being accosted in Detroit. One Saturday night while having drinks with a friend J, I met a WSU scientist named Vladimir who claimed that the research they were doing would “destroy the world”. He was drunk so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was just stressed. We became friends and shared conversation and many drinks as one does. Walking the older gentleman to his flat on Forest Avenue after last call . . . heading east toward Cass, one young white and two much older black men started to demand money from us. The white kid was punching me from behind with a metal rod as we walked. Right on my kidneys. He was making sure I felt it. The kid, an unfamiliar face at the time, was thin – the kind of narrow that was neglect induced. The wretched twig was seeking out his next fix, that much I could see in his hallow eyes when I turned my head. At any moment I sensed an ambush from the man next to me. They would tackle me down and pins my arm behind my side and back. My friend J had no weight to him and couldn’t help me. But these crooks couldn’t know that my strength comes from my back as well as my brain. I will use their momentum against them, and pass the forward motion of one onto the other and easily slip away. Thank you Tai Chi. It was comical how easy my friend and I got away. I won’t say we were toying with them. We knew the stakes. After we ran to get Vladimir home, I wanted to treat those assholes righteously. I realized the principle of the matter once home and to keep a long story short, picked up a shotgun and decided to teach the punks a lesson. "This is my neighborhood I remember thinking" and walked outside and down my balcony. I heard my friend behind me saying, “Dude, I get it. You’re pissed; yeah I get it.” I stomped down a stair and heard the door opening to the balcony. “Dude,” a voice hissed, “Hold up.” The world danced on a rusty orange sky. I spun. “Let me show you how you do it.” He grabbed the shotgun and after pushing me back down a stair had me in his Buick. We careened the tight corner and as quickly as we were around the block I had the kid in my literal sights. I aimed the weapon at the narrow space between his shoulders and thought for a nanosecond - some nonsensical thought. The thought, I could not detail. But it felt like a melding of wilderness and velocity. It felt as if walking while completely unfocused and without the ability to stop. I instantly hated the feeling and yet also knew I alone was the cause. In that moment I became conscious and then raised the barrel further upward out of target and... Colors rendered the night in blue and green streaked with rounded yellow streams as I looked, peering past the door windowsill as we drove quickly home. We passed the scared posse while I screamed many profanities at them. They didn’t look like they understood me save for their instinct to fall. The rearward scene was rendered with a familiar gray sidewalk yet with reeling and tumbling men. I never saw the accostors again in my neighborhood. But that moment inspired this song which is about an earnestly and equally inappropriate response to the threat of Islamic Jihad, a nuclear punishment, with which I want to share no part. I have learned my lesson. Power should be used carefully. UPRISING This song was conceived in 1997 while I lived in the basement of my parent’s house in White Lake after returning from Florida broke and just before going to WSU. It was first called, “Letter to Mr. Dead”, then became “Death of the Lion”. Terrible, I know. But it was about the spirit of Bob Marley having continued on though he was dead and the world was still strife with the serious illness of hatred and anger. I saw symptoms of it everywhere. Well, I took a look at the song again in 2016 and decided to record it during the Trump/Clinton Presidential campaign. It was finished in raw form just when we learned that Trump won the electoral victory. I really wanted to see a literal uprising. In a way there is one, there is a #resist movement that has the underpinnings of a secret revolution. I hope this song gives them some encouragement. The song is still about the spirit of love really. Well, love and revenge. We can get beat down, drugged, lied to, stripped of our individuality, but underneath us all, as human beings, we want love, we care about each other – we will rise up to overcome anyone who tries to make us their subjects. No lying, no compromising or angry gesticulation – let the power takeover now. Musically, I really wanted a big anthem type of fight song. The ending represents the battle. HEAVEN When this song was finally finished with the recording and mixing process, I cried. Yes, it was the last song on this album to finish – so that was part of it. But when looking back, I wrote this song immediately after my brother left my apartment on Prentis (circa ’02) after I sent him away telling him that I never wanted to speak with him again. He came earlier to apologize for breaking into my apartment and stealing my rifle. He brought me a compound bow (probably stolen) to pay me back. After we met, and shared a beer, I was ready to forgive him. But when he left I noticed that he left his pack of cigarettes on my counter. I called down to him from the balcony saying, “Hey you forgot your smokes ya idiot.” I was only joking, but he looked up at me and squinted. He didn’t seem to recognize me at all. Then he bounded up the stairs as though to cause me great bodily harm. He pounded on the metal storm door and I looked at him through it. I had already locked the door. Even through the clear glass door he didn’t seem to recognize me. I was a stranger to him. I knew at that moment I could never trust my own brother again. The concept is simple: happiness is elusive...well, it has always been elusive to me. The ending of the song is an attempt to get Heaven’s attention and call upon it. I always imagined more than one person singing this as in my mind I heard many voices such as a choir, but alas, there was only me here to do it. NO MORE Simple meaning: take no more/want no more. Maybe then we’ll all find more happiness in the world. Maybe if we gave a little more, we’d be less afraid. Maybe if we believed more in each other instead of some God concept created by fallible human beings, we’d all be better off and sleep better at night. This song was conceived one night around 2002 in the middle of the red/orange terror alert levels that the new Department of Homeland Security was issuing. I hated the idea of that department and I felt the terror alert system was simply a method of the elite to distract the country from all the significantly messed up things it was doing to financially funnel money from American workers into the pockets of the rich. Of course, that’s exactly what was happening. The media constantly reporting on the Homeland Security Advisory System and not once telling the country that the country was broke; the government had funneled too much money into two wars it couldn’t possible win, that people were losing their jobs because the government wasn’t providing the same level of subsidies, that those people were going broke and losing their high-priced homes they could no longer afford – until, what happened, but the economy finally bottomed out. Take no more Olivia, want no more than what is necessary to make you happy. Believe me, that’s not much baby. Not a whole lot of stuff – just good people and good experiences. HAIL THE FALLEN This song is dedicated to everyone who has lost their lives to gun violence, but particularly, mass shootings. The drums are a little lazy on purpose. Relax and give the dead their time. In the meantime, maybe if we stopped being afraid of being shot and started to actually be brave and love more, maybe the shootings will stop. To me, this was a difficult lesson to learn. You need to let go of your fear before you can truly love. It's ok to drop your fear and love another human being just for them being human. You don't need to know them. Right now, you love every person you see and you believe in the best in them. There is a disarming power in that love Olivia. Don't let the evil in the world take that from you like it has from almost every person who walks the Earth. HELLO MICHELLE There was a girl I knew in Florida named Michelle Rogers who was an absolutely breathtaking young woman who never should have been in the company of the people she was with. I believe that my friend J and I were a welcome respite for her I believe, as she could come to our apartment and relax without any expectations. We were friends and we had many good times. When I left Florida, and many years later, I called her close friend Donna and discovered that they had both been in a terrible car accident and Michelle has tragically died due to injuries sustained during the crash. Roughly two decades afterward, in 2016, I looked at my phone and saw Michael Rogers as a contact. I had first thought it said Michelle. The song was conceived in that moment, with the memories returning in full. I called my friend J and we spoke of her at length. The memories of her returned along with all the emotions of having the world lose this flower. I questioned whether to put this song on Liberality. Did it fit? The theme of loss is tragic, not social/political. And the song is a pop song really, with Rock elements sure, but not entirely fitting with the rest. But then I thought about if it were a perfect world, would she be here and the answer was yes. Something caused her to reach outside to the wrong element in the world and she died because of the drugs and drunkenness she used to fill the void that neglect created inside of her. And she isn’t unique with the losses of friends in my life. With a little love, free of prejudice, many lives would still be here. So because of that, the song stayed. And what do you know but in writing this, I was spurred to actually search the web and found her. She’s still alive; happy with a family, healthy and with the same awesome sense of humor. Donna was supposed to pick her up that night but never showed. Someone else died in the crash, not Michelle. Donna, oh Donna, you lied to me. KOREAN GIRL Korean Girl is inspired by Park Yeon-Mi after I watched her tell her story in front of the One Young World Summit in Dublin. I caught it two years later on YouTube. The story brought me to tears, simply the cruelty and unfairness of this world overwhelmed me but not nearly as much as her bravery, honesty and sheer grit. The song was originally entitled North Korean Girl but after following up with her other interviews, I dropped the “North” from the title as she has said she doesn’t believe there are North or South Koreans, just Koreans. I can respect that. Unfortunately, despite her idealism, there are. Both have become divided due to the drastically different life experiences they’ve had. It will take a generation, maybe more, once united for them to become one people. What can one say? Nothing. What can one do for the people of North Korea? Empathize. Make more art. Try to get it to them. I hope someone there hears this song one day and enjoys it. In the meantime, we have to make our own government answerable to the corruption and crimes it commits before it becomes like North Korea. People don’t understand that we aren’t really that far off. We’re just a couple tragedies away from authoritarianism. It all started in 2001, the system of controls put in place to monitor behavior. Appreciate what freedom you have Olivia, but always assume you have more than you think you might. Remember, it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. But in everything you do that may break the rules and push the envelope, make sure that your heart is in the right place and you are spurred by the need to give joy, have fun, be free and love with everything you have. Don't spend a moment thinking about the "what ifs", just do kiddo, just do the right thing even if it's the wrong way. Special thanks to Alex Kaye for the mixing and Mike Schwartz for the original album artwork, seriously, thank you!