I wrote this song some 20+ years ago. Haha! - This song is so old that I had to update these lyrics:

“I need to make things better” used to be “I need to send this letter.” 🤣🤣🤣

It’s a song about the sadness, isolation, and chaos of depression, and the searching for hope through all of that. I’ve had bouts of depression so I completely get it. In this instance though, this song was triggered by an expression I saw on a stranger’s face - this person seemed so lost at sea. At least that’s what I read into what I saw.

Anyway, a couple years ago, I had a date booked in the studio to record many tracks for my upcoming album, but I felt I needed a stand out opening track for the album, and this song came to the forefront of my imagination, if it could be done right. It’s a song that had only lived inside my head for two decades. Never had I recorded it before. Not even a rough acoustic recording.

A couple nights before going into the studio for two days of recording, I met with my acoustic guitar player Sean Driscoll and taught him the song. The way the acoustic guitar is playing the song on the recording you hear is what I wanted, and he charted the song for my other musicians we’d be seeing the following couple days. If we had time on day 2 after everything else was recorded, we’d give it a whirl and see what happened. With such short notice, I did not have high hopes for coming up with something good considering none of the other guys had even heard the song before.

After recording all the other songs over those two sessions, we had a little time to kill with what was left of our studio time that last day, so I briefly talked to the band about my vision for the song, and then we went into the recording room and pressed play.

What you’re hearing on the recording is mostly the first of only two takes of the song (my piano player had to leave in 20 mins from when we started) - the band and me just improvising off each other. The acoustic guitar rhythm, taught a couple nights before, was the foundation, but everything else was completely improvised… up until the guitar solo, which I literally sang to the band in my vocal booth when we came to that part of the song, and then my electric guitar player Ben Butler immediately saddled up and mimicked what I sang as best as he could. He did that ridiculously brilliant solo in a couple takes as well. Wow.

After that session, over the next couple years - remember, Covid happened - I just overdubbed the keyboard strings, a couple vocal lines, the backing vocals, and tambourine. That’s it.

If I do say so myself, I’m blown away by what we pulled off. My band is sensational.