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A little background on the pieces:

"The World Within" was my very first attempt at a solo recording. In the midst of recovering from gall bladder surgery in 1987, I decided to pick up a Tascam Porta One four-track cassette recorder and see what I could do to put it to use. Came up with the (admittedly simple) bass line while in the shower one morning and was fortunate to find it could be recorded into the real-time sequencer on my Moog Source. Added several more synth tracks (live) via a Roland Juno 106 and the Source, then went to work on the electric guitar and flute melodies, followed by the 12-string guitar in the main solo section and guitar solos. Learned a lot about the Tascam unit in the process and am still quite happy with the results, which actually garnered a little college airplay back at the time.

Moved to New Jersey in late 1987 and ended up forming a prog band called Tangent (not be confused with "The Tangent" who came much later) with an old friend from high school. By the time the group imploded, I was left with two undeveloped ideas--a complete keyboard-based structure for a song (which later turned into "Maginot Line" on Advent's debut CD, thanks to significant contributions from Henry and Mark Ptak) and an extended electric guitar intro. Upon deciding to enter Guitar Player's "Soundpage" competition that year (1989), I chose to leverage the latter idea and simply append a solo section to the end. The bulk of time was actually spent step-sequencing the Kawai drum machine part in Dr. T's KCS (on my old Amiga 1000), after which the remainder came together very quickly. The piece came in three seconds under the five-minute limit and was submitted accordingly. While "The World Within" seemed to imply more of a Mike Oldfield/Camel influence, "The Escape" may tend to reveal the impact of artists such as Rush, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and Allan Holdsworth on my style.

Although featured on Advent's Cantus Firmus CD, "Remembering When" unintentionally turned into another solo piece, as I ended up composing, arranging, and performing the entire track. The original acoustic guitar idea dated from 1989 or so and actually began as a picking exercise. Leveraging a week in December of 2005 where my work schedule was shifted by three hours (starting at 11 AM), I spent every morning in the studio. Recorded two passes of the acoustic guitar on Monday and developed the remainder of the arrangement from there. The original intent was to approach the piece as an interlude and, by the time I finished laying down the last electric guitar parts on Saturday, it was already getting a bit bigger than anticipated so I decided to refrain from adding keyboards or any other additional instrumentation.

Lastly, please note that both "Ramblin' Sailor" cuts simply consist of all the raw guitar tracks (no EQ, no effects, etc.), turned up to unity gain and dispersed with a little rough panning--as well as a tiny bit of an old keyboard/bass submix in the background for reference. The intent is simply to share an "under the hood" glimpse into the guitar work/orchestration contained within. It's about as "naked" as it gets, so please listen with a kind heart and open mind.

11/28/2008 UPDATE: I was devastated to hear that Pekka Pohjola, one of my musical idols, passed away yesterday. As a friend (who I was fortunate enough to meet and assist back in 1993), as well as one of my most dramatic and persistent influences/inspirations, I really wanted to pay tribute in the best way I knew how. With this in mind, I decided to share a demo of an unfinished original composition (from about a decade ago) that, in my opinion at least, provides substantial evidence of the indelible mark that Pekka has left on my musical soul. While I definitely plan to develop the piece to completion in the future, I very much hope that you enjoy this humble snapshot of a work-in-progress that will certainly remain dedicated to his honor.