Like a patch of sunlight...fleeting and between clouds... or maybe like a whirlwind, invading the quiet of day-to-day with gusts of insights, responses and the music...mostly the music. Fragments of melodies, pieces of lyric written here and rediscovered there. The stepping out into mid-air, trusting that the heart is guiding the fingers... those strings on the these frets followed by the certainty that this IS the way to say THAT...and this NEEDS to be said, and... ultimately it's all about trust, isn't it? removed some 40 years from the TOP FORTY MUSIC BUSINESS, i don't kid myself about being a contemporary in the biz. But y'know what? i couldn't NOT do it. and every step along the way has been an adventure confirmed. It's easy to see now that this project is the result of many contributing friendships - some of them well over 50 years old. My hope is that ONE&MANY honors the warmth of their giving. Like a patch of sunlight... nps 2012 LOVE RULES! 1998 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey. Northfield Mt. Hermon school provided not only the home for my wife and I during the 8 years of her tenure there as chaplain, but a chance to dialogue with 14 to 18 year olds about what was important in their lives. In looking for a way to express the commonality of a spiritual hunger, I found myself trying to musically describe love as if it were capitalized. CAPRICIOUS BIRD 2010 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey. The soul's relationship to the heart has always been a subject of curiosity to me. Are our deepest feelings those which are held in the heart or simply sensed there and truly dwell in the soul? My conclusion might not be provable but I sense that souls are the resting places of our spirituality to which our hearts, searching for the meaning in life, inevitably return. THE CONNECTION 2010 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey, John Boit, David Zee A conversation debating the wisdom of the United States military presence in Afghanistan led to the conclusion that many Americans were not aware of the relationship between the cultivation of poppies, the production of opiates, drug traffic and the funding of global terrorist activities. This song addresses those issues from several perspectives - none of them comfortable. NOT THAT KIND OF MUSIC 2011 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey, Jim Mason Some songs are for listening, some for dancing. Some are as ubiqutous as wallpaper and others become soundtracks for spectacles. But the songs that move us the most are the ones whose melodies invoke a passion and whose lyrics inform and inspire our lives; songs that transcend the moment because they are the articulation of our hearts. JEAN CLAUDE 2009 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey, Lan O'kun, Richard Unsworth Begun backstage over 20 years ago as a pattern of harmonics played on guitar, this song was eventually born out of a marriage of rhythmic experiments in 5/4 time (the chorus), audience suggestions (the conceptual theme) and the incendiary serendipity of a simple pamphlet discovered in a bookstore in Paris, France describing a most horrific period of time in humankind's history: the holocaust. The song had it's liturgical premier at Temple Beth El in Michigan on Yom Hashoah, April 19th, 2012. PONY 2009 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey, Rebecca McCall. In 2009 I was asked if I would contribute a performance to a fund-raising CD by creating a song in response to a painting done by a Maine artist of my choice. I immediately thought of my talented neighbor Rebecca McCall and, after a visit to her studio, came away impressed by her series of sensitive portrayals of the Iraqi people. This piece then grew out of her rendering (and my musical interpretation) of a young man standing proudly before his horse in one of the Baghdad marketplaces. ONE AND MANY 2008 NEWORLD MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING, ASCAP / Noel Paul Stookey, Elizabeth Stookey, Sam Lardner. As citizens of a world made smaller by travel an
