As the world came to a standstill in 2020, I had the good fortune to be able to use that time as my own personal "artist-in-residence." Working with my long-time friend and occasional bandmate, Producer/Mixer John March, we had the opportunity, time, and space for a deep dive into recordings made several years earlier in Boulder with Mike Stern. Two tracks, which started as studio improvisations, evolved and morphed into intricate polished pieces on the album, Mike's Bait Tone Blues and a 13-minute improvisational odyssey, Easy Offramp. The latter was inspired by the approaches taken by Miles Davis and Teo Macero in creating Bitches Brew. With uninterrupted time, our creative collaboration allowed these pieces to take shape organically and often unexpectedly.

Easy Offramp arose from a story shared by a friend working in hospice care. Hearing of her patient's desperate longing for a speedier exit deeply affected me, and I later thought he wants an easy offramp. These emotions haunted me, and I later found myself at the piano. The theme that emerged eventually became the core of a 13-minute composition.

Though not strictly programmatic, these emotions led to creating a piece that carries the weight of that narrative. It unfolded over several years like a road map through improvisations, arranging, and re-structuring via editing and re-recording. With the story continuing to swirl in my psyche, I went along for the journey that had a lot of different entrances and exits, which included recording new guitar parts with Mike Stern in 2022, new drums with Steve Haas, and bass parts with Kevin Axt in 2023.

John and I had already spent most of 2019 mixing the tracks we recorded with Mike Stern and Eddie Gomez in New York in 2018. As part of that, he also produced and edited videos for many of those tracks. Despite the challenges created by the pandemic and John moving to Spain, we worked remotely using some new technologies, and we were able to achieve extraordinary results. Even from 4,000 miles away, John elicited performances from me that pushed my limits and got me to previously undiscovered places. As a mixing engineer, he was able to sculpt soundscapes that transcended the limitations of remote collaborations. Every instrument and each performance integrates into a seamless whole; every part dances in the mix, creating a sonic landscape that captivates and inspires.

As Falling From Earth prepares to launch, I hope you can join me in sharing this process that has brought forth the music I have for so long imagined.