Dog Jealousy & Elvis

“Dog’s Day” is a silly song that I’ll probably never fully arrange. But including it here was important because it marks the months when I fell in love with my wife (a veterinarian). Dogs were never really my thing, but she changed that, and suddenly an empathy with the beasts grew in my heart. It was her planting those seeds. Magically, a song from a dog’s point of view popped into my head––a dog jealous of his master’s loitering boyfriend. The scenario was mirrored by reality. Willa, my wife’s dog since way before I’d come into the picture, was a real bitch to me. Never willing to get out of the way during those more intimate moments.

“Ready To Love” stands out as my favorite here. Maybe because it’s a blast to play on guitar. But also, it reminds me of a saccharine song Elvis Presley could have sung in one of his awful films. I was trying to channel a little early Billy Preston from those first Apple Records albums of his––but, as usual, missed the mark.

Releasing a mostly solo album in conjunction with the WISELY album made sense because I knew I’d be doing a lot of solo touring. Plus, there were so many demos lying around from those sessions. I’d gone back to my writing journals and tried to finish most anything I’d ever started. It seemed a shame to bury all that work. You can probably tell that a couple of these tracks were the exact recordings that we built full band arrangements upon––I think “Ella”, “California” & “Cracked World View”.