Best of Friends was conceived during a recording session of a remake of the song You’ve Got To Have Friends popularized by Bette Midler. Though a very nice song when sung by Bette, I wasn’t adding a thing to the original. I had been hired to demo the song to a company for the syndication of the TV hit, Friends. Discouraged with what I was recording, I quickly wrote and submitted the core of what you hear now. It was politely rejected. I filed it away in a corner of my brain until 2002 when I fleshed it out and played it for Carly Simon (a dear friend from Martha’s Vineyard since 1964 when we first sang together). She loved it and asked to sing it with me. I was born at night, but not last night and her generous offer was immediately accepted. Given the warm reception that Carly had given Best of Friends, I started to bring her early workings of all the songs that followed. It is not an overstatement to say that her enthusiasm and guidance made this CD possible

There I’ll Be started when I was playing Lennon/ McCartney’s Blackbird. After a painful journey up the guitar neck trying to copy Paul’s style, I found myself back at the G chord in the first position with no desire to leave again. I was recording in Nashville and knew the players I was working with would freak out over straight four’s in G. I tried out the basic groove with the band in an early session and I was right. They sounded great and I resolved to finish the song. Once done, I figured that James Taylor’s guitar playing would bring it to life. Now getting an older brother to do anything is not that easy, so I cooked up a plan. I went over to his house and started playing the groove while making sure there was another tuned guitar close by (capoed up five frets so he could finger in D). I started playing and James walked by. After a bit, he walked back in the other direction. The noose tightened. On his third walk by, I suggested he pick up the other guitar and finger in D. His face lit up. “I invented D!” he said. “I know,” I replied. Listen carefully to his guitar part - light and just about perfect. His guitar playing is the bedrock of his amazing career and it’s the bedrock of this song. Vince Gill got word that James and I were playing together and wanted to add a part of his own. The burning stratocaster in the solo section is his- an amazing thrill for me to play with these guitar legends. While recording in Boston, my sister Kate joined James and me for backup vocals. Our first time together in a recording studio- a career moment for me. Just before we went to mix, Pam Tillis sang a series of high background vocal parts throughout the song. It was high already and her touch took it to the stratosphere.

Yes is pure pop. I love pop music, the delicious, indulgent ear candy of Earth, Wind and Fire or Chicago or Natalie Cole ­ over the top; too much of everything. I’m a sucker for that sound. I had written the chorus, but struggled to come up with a story line. Time and time again, I started down promising paths to a dead end and then Pow! “I had me a girl, bright as sunshine, sweet as candy, smart as a book”. Great opening lines are hard to come by. A couple that stand out are “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” or “My boyfriend’s back and there’s going to be trouble”. I’m not saying that mine is that good, but I laughed out loud when I wrote it because I had a plot and I knew the song would write itself. Later in the song, I sing an E note; that’s high enough to give an old baritone like me a nose bleed. Don’t expect it every night.

My Baby Don’t Mind is a lyric based song. That means I wrote the lyrics before I developed the melody. I normally like to have a fairly developed melody and a vague lyric outline as a writing base. I then let the melody and the lyrics fill out and mature, changing one or the other as the need arises. That said, I loved the character that I was writing about so much that I forged ahead without melody. Don’t we all feel like this guy, “chasing a dream to the end of a rainbow”. Not able to do anything else but hope you have enough hope for one more pipe dream. Our oldest brother Alex was the epitome of this person. I know he would have loved this entire CD, but this song in particular would have made him cry like a baby. And as I think about Alex crying, I cry too. He is so missed. I am very grateful for the sad joy we feel when a departed loved one’s spirit sits on our shoulder and applauds our journey. Dan Dugmore had the sensitivity to capture the pathos of this song in his flowing pedal steel part. He knew Alex too.

Step By Step began during a lecture to a group of middle school kids in Texarkana, Texas about three years ago. I had come to town to do a show and give a lecture. As the kids filed in to the auditorium, I became worried. They didn’t know me from a tree stump. Here I was, a tall mid-fifties guy from Cambridge, Massachusetts attempting to get across to teenagers from a Southern rural environment. The ethnic mix of the group was about two-thirds Caucasian to one-third African American. The white students were casually scattered about the room and the black students seated themselves together as a tight knit group. I felt like I was from the planet Zorg. I wondered how would I get through? I carefully introduced myself to each of the students, paying particular care to the black group as I felt a larger gulf between us. I began my lecture as usual, asking the students who would like to make a living in the creative arts (i.e. who would like to be rich and famous)? All hands went up. I spoke about getting from the fantasy to the reality; about taking each step in turn. I then asked if they were ready to “take a little step?” I accompanied the phrase with a touch of melody and a little dance, falling into a gospel groove in an attempt to relate to all gathered. They laughed long and hard at my goofiness and the song was born. I’ve struggled with whether or not to include this overtly gospel music on this CD. Will it confuse my audience? Will they wonder if I am born again? I was raised in North Carolina and gospel music was an integral part of my upbringing. It’s a music that I love. This song showed up and I wrote it down. I am very proud of it. I am neither prolific nor smart enough to question the muse. Let the chips fall where they may. The recording of the basic tract of the song was one of the highlights of making this CD. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and I ran down the tune for the assembled studio musicians. I was in Nashville and this was their music. They grabbed it and off they went. I simply held on for the ride. Andrae Crouch is, of course, a gospel legend. His arrangement for the New Day Jubilee Choir tells you why.

There You Are Again is old school writing. The song has five parts: intro, verse, chorus, bridge, and ending. I was very insecure about the lyrics until I was told by the spirit of Irving Berlin to stand up for the choices I made. Here’s what happened. I was drifting through the lyrics of God Bless America when a revelation hit me. “From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam” Foam? It occurred to me that the word foam was a compromise. It’s simply not a great lyric, but it was probably the best Irving could do when his following lyric could not change; “God bless America, my home sweet home”. We are used to the lyric now, but can you imagine a time when nobody had heard this song? Irving Berlin plays it for some producer who whines about the word foam. Berlin was a tough guy and I had a vision of him fighting for his compromise. He certainly would have thought through all possible English language choices (dome, loam comb, etc.). Foam was the best the language had to offer. Stand up and fight for your artistic compromise. Once you’ve made the choice, defend it. The weakest parts deserve the most protection. Irving freed me to write plain and simple and to be proud of it. The beautiful strings and woodwinds on this song and throughout this CD were all written by Sheldon Mirowitz and recorded in New York City. The passion, wisdom and skill of a great arranger conducting thirty world class musicians lift your music in a way that is untouchable by the soulless monotony of a synthesizer. I love live strings. Thank God for budget limitations, for with enough money I would have recorded until I drowned.

Of all the songs on this CD, Tuesday’s Lullaby is the most collaborative. It is here because my producer and arranger were passionate about it and I caught their energy. The textural nature of the song is achieved by Sheldon Mirowitz’s wonderful arrangement intertwined around Bashiri Johnson’s percussion overdubs. It being my record and all, I had to leave me on it. But of all the songs, this is the one where I am least needed. Put on some headphones, ignore me and listen to the amazing textures that have been created underneath my vocal. With Gary Burton on vibraphone and David Sanborn on sax, this is smooth jazz on steroids.

Tell Jesus To Come To My House is the other overtly Gospel song on this CD. From its very inception, the great a cappella group, Take 6 was in my mind for what to write. As each part came together, I visualized how they would sound singing it. When it was done, I sent a copy to Mark Kibble (a member of Take 6 and arranger of this song) and asked him if they would sing it with me. I had four days of torture waiting for their reply. Obviously their answer was yes and I simply freaked out. They were the most meticulous and disciplined artists that I’ve ever worked with. What a thrill to listen to my heroes weave their magic around my music. I am blessed by their participation.

Blame It On Me was a song that I had only partly finished when I played it for my producer Glenn Rosenstein. He became very animated and insisted that we record it right then and there. Completely firm in my resolve not to record unfinished songs, I said no. Given the fact that the song is here, we know who won that argument. I had folded like a pair of two’s. We charted it up and I gave it to the band. We recorded it and I finished the lyrics a month or so later. To any of my students at the Berklee College of Music who are reading this, I have not changed my opinion that recording unfinished material is a terrible idea. It is a recipe for wasting vast quantities of time and money to chase a bad idea around a recording studio. I was lucky on this one. It even has one of my favorite lyrics on the CD, “you don’t have to just adjust”. Brother James tells me it’s a favorite of his. He’s a sucker for a pop shuffle too.

Speaking of James, I wrote My Perfect Christmas Day for him. He told me he was making a Christmas record for Hallmark and I thought it would be cool to write a Christmas song for him to record. The bad new was that they wrapped before I could get the song to him. The good news was that I had a brand new shiny Christmas song for myself. The background vocals that complete this song were sung by the Nashville Belles (Kim Fleming, Kim Mont and Vicky Hampton). The song starts in E flat and the Belles are singing as high as humanly possible. When I questioned their ability to sing the high note once the song had modulated to the key of F, they scoffed at my incredulity, stepped into the vocal booth and gave that high note an old fashioned Nashville spanking. If you have a moment, pay attention to the lyric in the bridge, I’m rather proud of it.

I Wish I were a Cowboy is one of those melodies that appears in an instant. I wrote it and then left myself a message on my cell phone because I was worried I would forget it. I was right to be worried. I did forget it. When I got around to retrieving messages a couple of days later, in amongst the chatter and noise of unfulfilled responsibility was that melody. It was such a joy to hear it again. At the same time, I was in the middle of relationship hell (don’t we ever outgrow this stuff?) and this Hank Williams-esque song was the result. When I went to record this tune, I had the thought of putting New York, LA pop cool together with the understated discipline of traditional bluegrass. Steve Gadd on drums and Leland Sklar on base, meet Aubrey Haynie on fiddle and Paul Franklin on dobro. While getting these world class players to record a song as simple as this did feel a bit like asking Jackson Pollack and Norman Rockwell to paint my bathroom, it was unbelievably fun. Listen and decide for yourself if the experiment was successful.

You’re The Boss of Me ends the CD. That title pretty much sums up how I feel about my audience and the people who’ve allowed me to take this wonderful ride.

Thanks for the listen.