The 'F' Word

Liner Notes

I had the idea for an album pretty early on. I had been writing some tunes towards the beginning of the summer that I was fortunate enough to be able to perform live, and along with some tunes from as far back as a couple years, I worked to assemble a collection of original music that would sound different than what we were all used to. This ended up being a collection of straight-ahead jazz, rock, funk, and even a dash of metal in one tune. This variety of styles allowed me to not only push the limits of the players (a group of friends from high school), but also afforded me the unique opportunity to do much of the recording work after the few original sessions, in he form of synth programming. "The Chase" actually started as a few synthesized tracks over which we laid guitar and drums.

But back to the players; these guys are awesome. With very limited rehearsal time, maybe two or three sessions all-together, they managed to pull together what you hear on the album. The rhythm section worked very well even with convoluted changes of time signature and tempo. During rehearsal of one of the songs, I remember Mack, our drummer, complaining that his music was "all lines." Rushing to get the recording done before the summer ended, I had given him a drum part that was pretty much a page full of slash marks, but I couldn't have told by listening. Similarly, our guitar player, Koby, and bass player, Scott, a guitar player who we regularly abuse with near-impossible bass parts, performed admirably with difficult, and often confusing parts. I can only hope our subtle mix of work and goofing around will lead to a pleasurable stimulation of your auditory nerves. Oh yeah, "The 'F' Word" is "Fusion" by the way. What did you think it was?