Ten Miles (2019) was my first full-length album since 2009. While I'd played a few hundred gigs and written quite a few songs during that time, I hadn't put a collection together in a while except the abbreviated Tuscarawas EP in 2017. So when January of 2019 rolled around, it seemed like time.

The opening track, That Girl, is the only one that wasn't completely new. It was on my Birdhouse Gourds 2005 album "Ohio" and I always felt that it was the best song on the album, but poorly recorded. I was just learning how to make an album in the early 2000s and a few of those tracks showed it. So That Girl got a complete renovation, true to the original but with quite a bit more gusto.

The rest are all completely new. Some came very easily, like Subterfuge is Fun and Get the Big One, written and recorded in a day each. Others, like Michigan Street, had many versions recorded until the right one surfaced. Michigan Street is in fact one of my personal favorites and seems to resonate with live audiences as well.

Ten Miles is another favorite, inspired by my family's immigration stories from the late 1800s and early 1900s. I get a bit choked up sometimes thinking about the incredible courage it must have took to leave the only place you'd ever known for strange parts an ocean away with barely the shoes on your feet. Fears? Absolutely. Hope? For sure. Regrets? Maybe. But here we are.

We Gonna Get It is the silly one. Just to show that it's not all folk rock, you know.

BONUS TRACK. Picture Me Gone... In the fall of 2019, i watched a video of one of my friends being wheeled through a hospital, with Coast Guard shipmates saluting in honor as she went to spent her last moments alive just before giving the gift of life to others as an organ donor. As I sat on my front porch that night looking up at a deep blue sky, the lyrics of this song came to me in one flow.

BONUS TRACK. Lake Erie Crushers... I wrote this baseball theme for our local Frontier League minor league baseball team. Nothing better than great seats and Dippin' Dots on a summer evening that cost a fraction of the major league park.

BONUS TRACK. Mast Captain... Here's an outlier... an ambient instrumental track written for an unmade TV miniseries. Ooooh, mysterious!!! A Bandcamp exclusive, you won't find this one anywhere else.

I hope you enjoy these songs. They were created especially for you, dear reader.

Special thanks to Eric Shiveley for his enduring support and helpful ears! Sometimes it's difficult to get the right kind of feedback during the songwriting and production processes, but he has never failed to provide words of wisdom and encouragement. Eric is the finest musician you may not have heard of. His music his harder to find, but do yourself a favor and hunt down a copy of any of his albums. My copies are on constant repeat.