This is an album of songs from the last year and half that stuck around long enough to have to deal with them in the only way I know how: record em and set em free. It is a digression only in the way that they could be considered of a notably less 'experimental' nature. That said, they come from the same place of creative genesis and ought to be let out just the same. I partake in the American folk tradition not as re-enactment of bygone times but a process of renewal and re-ownership of my musical inheritance. Playing this style feels like coming home, and like coming back to anything familiar after a long time away, I see it/hear it/feel it anew.

For those whom I have played it for, "Forgive Me for I Have Aged" is the song about my red pants, yes, but it's really about what I was just talking about, and for that reason, it gets lead-off. I had those pants in a suitcase in a friend's attic for a year and a half while I was away, and it was rough at first, but don't worry, we've made up and they're still my favorite pair.

Some of you know the real Gateway Motel, and you might agree, it's a place deserving of a song. I conceived the idea two Summers ago, but the (fictitious) story evaded being written until the dead of Winter. The tune was written in the back row of a bus in Guatemala.

"Feel the Ease" is all true. Roll on Columbia, roll on.

"How Does the Dew Do?' came to me while walking back to my tent one dewy morning high up in the mountains just as the sun came over the ridge, making everything glitter. The rest was written in my head while walking down the trail the rest of the day.

"Big Words" came to me while listening to a late-night radio broadcast. I got what the host was about, but man, that was one wordy guest.

"Fishin' for Wishes" came to me in the heat of the day while laying with my back on a tarp in the shade of some Mesquite trees in Mexico. It is not autobiographical.

"Butternut" was written entirely in the noggin while biking the last 17 miles of a long day into Butternut, WI in the Summer of '17. I did in fact meet some nice folks and did relieve myself there, at long last.

"Amarte Asi" was also written in the head while driving south to Albany, NY. If it weren't for the old Spanish guitar I was holding onto for a friend at the time, it may not have turned out. That thing was just calling for a love song.

"Truer Love" is a love song.