PARADISO: To me, Paradiso represents an era of resolution, beauty and calm, possibly after a stormy stretch of life. The feelings in me that the music generates call to mind old world art, beauty, drama, and warmth. Some of the music that influenced me before and during the recording of Paradiso include a recent fascination with Tchaikovsky, as well as long-time influences Erik Satie, Beethoven, Bach; and film composers Craig Armstrong and Philip Glass. Like my previous project, The Crossing, my goal was to avoid the mine-field of cliches that solo piano music naturally calls to mind, while creating original pieces of art. A SONG BY SONG DESCRIPTION: GRETCHEN'S THEME: Obviously written for my musical partner and wife, singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters. There are shades of (Scottish film composer) Craig Armstrong and Beethoven in this piece. NORTH PLATTE: This piece was written, recorded and released previously in two parts on the album One To The Heart, One To The Head, by Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell. At the time that album was being written, Tom asked me to write an atmospheric piece to open the album. I had just watched the movie Something about Schmidt, starring Jack Nicholson, with a great soundtrack that included Erik Satie's music . A large part of the film was shot on the Northern High Plains in between Minnesota and Denver. The starkness of the landscape was in my mind as I wrote this piece, and North Platte, both the town and the river, captured in two words exactly what I was seeing and hearing. KOBLENZ: I wrote this piece shortly before Gretchen Peters and I left for a tour of Germany and Holland in March, 2011. I was fine tuning it during the tour, and debuted it one night at our gig in Koblenz, a lovely city on the Rhine in Northern Germany. It was received warmly, and I promised the audience I would name it after their beautiful city. David Henry's cello adds much to this piece. YOUTH AND AGE: My son Brennan came over while I was recording this album, and we wrote and recorded this piece over the course of a few days. His guitar parts added a whole new dimension to both the song and the album. Gretchen came up with the title from a William Butler Yeats poem. We all thought it was a great title for this 'cross-generational' musical moment. PARADISO: Very much influenced by French parlor music of the last century, with a hint of Philip Glass on the intro. Like Koblenz, I had written most of this piece in the year before our German/Holland tour of March 2011. I finished it and started playing it during our soundchecks. The live debut came one night at the famous Paradiso venue in Amsterdam, and as happened in Koblenz, I promised the audience that I would name the piece for them. I liked the title so much I decided to use it for the album title. SEVEN WEEKS: I wanted to record a piece where Gretchen played simple piano lines that I could overdub to. She came up with a nice, atmospheric melody, and I played around with electronic keyboard sounds weaving in and out of her notes. I added the guitar later on as an afterthought. Gretchen came up with this title one day while we were asking ourselves how we were going to get through some rough times. She said we'd just take it seven weeks at a time. SON BINOCLE: As a lifelong Erik Satie fan, I was pleasantly surprised to find this short gem I hadn't heard before in a collection of his piano works. The harmonic shifts are what attracted me to it. JULY 20: It was July 20, 2011, and this was the last piece written for this project. I was playing the opening theme on the piano and Gretchen called to me from the other room saying, that's beautiful, what is it? At the time it was just a simple idea that was crying out for further exporation. I still needed one more piece for the album, and I wanted a piece with a strong solo. This one piece alone took me three weeks to wrangle, but I think it was worth the sweat equity I put in to capture it. MARATHON MOTOR WORKS: This piece was influenced partly by Philip Glass. After I recorded the piano part, it reminde
