This CD was written before my debut album 'Older & Wiser?' even though it was released after it. These songs came from a time when I lost love, friends, my father and my home within a short period of time. The fall from grace and the climb back to who I am now lives within these songs. My friend MacEzra had this to say about the description of this album: “So I just need you to hold on,” sings Tim Kelley on A Basement Anthem. The past is glowing, red, ferocious on this, clawing, clinging, reminding us of where we’ve been and what we’ve lost. There is pain here. There is loss. Here is Prometheus undaunted, stealing fire again because he knows the cost and sees the worth. Here is the beauty of the ache in humanity, here is the beauty in the need. “I just need you to hold on.” Here is the beauty of all of our failings and flailings. Here is the smoking beast of past holding close and the patient rejoinder that “you don’t owe me anything.” The harmonies and piano don’t move towards escape, quite the opposite; this album is about embracing and growing. In sly lyrics and shifting vocals these songs dig at who we’ve been, who we’ve hurt, and who we’ve lost; glaring at those ferocious red eyes of untenable past and daring them to try and take away from what we’ve made of it today. This album is the reach and grasp of beauty, the slow build of emotional strength, the very fact that who we are is also who we’ve been. But, more than that, this album, for all it’s history, is about future; about the melodic fact that we can be precisely who we need to be. - MacEzra