This album could only have been created in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; I can still vividly recall sitting on the steps in front of my apartment with my guitar, only to start walking up Broad Street once I started playing something interesting, and “Meteor” being completed a few hours later. That was August 2012, but these songs were written over the course of a year, or a little longer, and they were all written in Bethlehem. “The Present Tension” was written on July 4th. A few of the riffs and concepts are older (“Drug Addicted Summer” dates back to the mid 2000’s), but the overall concept of the album, and the final shape all songs took are inextricably linked in my mind to that time of my life, and to Bethlehem.
The original plan was for this to be the working demo off of which I would bounce ideas in my head and record a more ‘produced’ version in the coming months; something professional, something complete. It never happened. I left Bethlehem and I wandered around the country for a while, eventually settling in San Francisco. My frame of mind, as well as the aesthetic direction I was moving toward when writing these songs and conceptualizing them as an album, have given way for a new vision of myself as an artist and human being, and I have long lost interest in recording these songs again.
I still love playing them, and I still love listening to them.
After much back and forth with myself, I’ve decided to finally release this album as it is: imperfect, messy, sloppy, but conceptually focused and meticulously written, and hopefully enjoyable to anyone who decides to spend some time listening.