Behind the Music: "Love Loss Hope Desire"

Just some stories behind my just-out album

In April, I released a solo music album, Love Loss Hope Desire.

I started writing songs when I was about 40, thanks to my dear friend Mark Holmes. When he and I met in the DC area in the late-1990s, he was an accomplished singer-songwriter. I got my first guitar when I was 13 but had mostly just played by myself in my room. We started casually playing guitars together. He encouraged me to perform and write.

That led to us forming a band called Not Dead Yet to play our songs. I started writing all the stuff that had been bottled up for years. I still love to write music, and now do it mostly for my New York band, Total Blam Blam.

But I wanted to do a solo project, recording songs that were never meant for either band. This album was recorded in a studio in New York with producer Tony Calabro. Tony is more than just a fantastic producer – he’s also a multi-instrumentalist. I played rhythm guitar and harmonica, and he played everything else – except the fiddle on “Pretty Smart Car.” That was provided by Joe Deninzon, the touring violinist for Kansas. (Which I still think is very cool.)

Here’s a little background on each song:

They Needed Anyone: Completely fictional, but when I wrote it I was living in a suburban neighborhood with a lot of stories of troubled marriages all around. I got the idea of writing a song that captured both sides of one marriage story. For any Byrds fans out there, the opening riff is borrowed from “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better.” At the time, I had struck up a bit of a friendship with Roger McGuinn. Always loved his Rickenbacker sound. Couldn’t help myself.

When I Fell for You: The sentiment and some elements were plucked from my life, but I was more influenced by nostalgic rock songs like “Summer of ‘69” and “Cherry Bomb.” So I wrote from the perspective of young lovers who met in a small town, and then life gets in the way and they find themselves thinking back on better days.

Just Break Away: The most autobiographical song I ever wrote. When I wrote it in my late-40s, I was struggling with making sense of my life and reconciling with my father’s death when I was a kid. While I took some liberties with the facts – there was, for instance, never a “girl from years ago shopping for a dress” moment – a lot of the references come directly from growing up in Binghamton, N.Y. I did get one chance to pitch in Little League. My second pitch of the game got blasted out of the park. That was the end of my pitching career.

Pretty Smart Car: I was the technology columnist for USA Today for more than a decade, and I got to know a lot of tech journalists from other publications, including Quentin Hardy, a long-time tech editor with the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and NY Times. We were probably bored at a tech conference and started talking about writing song lyrics together. Smart cars were a hot topic of the day, so we took off from that and wrote this song. When recording it with Tony, I felt we needed a fiddle part. Through Tony’s contacts we landed on Joe, who recorded his brilliant part on his own and sent it back.

Missing You: I always liked John Waite’s hit song, and for years I enjoyed playing a solo acoustic version that’s slower and more plaintive. I wanted to have one cover on the album and chose to do this. I love Tony’s piano playing and his understated production.

Somewhere It’s Another Day: I loved the way The Beatles played with words and terms, like “Eight Days a Week” and “Hard Day’s Night.” In a way, this song is a flip side of “Yesterday.” Instead of longing for yesterday, our heartbroken protagonist longs to get on a jet and fly to the other side of the world where it’s ANY other day – though he can’t figure out if it’s the next day or the day before.

Stop Something I Can’t Start with You: Again, here’s the Lennon-McCartney influence, playing with words and phrases. I used that idea throughout the song as a way to show the conflicting emotions of being smitten with someone but unable to act on it. “When we’re alone I find I have to leave before I stay” – that kind of thing. I wanted this to be a duet, and thought of my friend Regan Glover, who sang with me on stage a few times. Her sweet vocals take the song to whole new level.

I’m Moving On: When I first moved to New York, I got involved in a band with a female singer who had a bluesy, soulful kind of voice. She was going through a tough breakup, and I actually wrote this song for her to sing. Then she left the band. I still liked the song and thought it would be something different to put on this album. Would love to play this live with a horn section!

Full Moon: In 2020, in the middle of Covid, my daughter, who lives in England, was about to have a baby. I live in New York. I kept thinking about having a granddaughter so far away, and wrote this song as something I could sing to her. Tony’s production brings this great 1980s synth-pop sound to it, influenced by the song “Take My Breath Away.”

Born Without No Blues: Total silliness. Just wanted to write a traditional blues song with very untraditional blues song lyrics. Somehow the line “I’m sitting in a sauna with ten ugly naked guys” came out and the rest just flowed.

Love Loss Hope Desire is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon or just about any platform.