I like to think of music albums as real records. I'm not referring to large black disk with a bunch of grooves in it, but a historical piece, documenting a place and time in a songwriter's life. I haven't made that many recordings all tolled. A few with my college band, my first full record NORTH, and this one. That is enough to at least say that I can remember strange little details about each one. I remember how exciting it was the first I loaded into a studio to record, the blizzard while driving to the studio in Ithaca, NY the second time around, the amazing weekend of demo recordings we had in South Strafford, VT for NORTH. There are the little details that stick out, but a lot of it also fades away. With this record, on the other hand, I know I'm going to remember pretty much everything. I know this because I've had to document everything I've done from the very beginning of the process for my MA degree. The point of it is for us to become fully conscious of all the choices we make. From my initial writing decisions to rewrites to my recording plan, it's all been put down on paper to help me better understand who I am as a songwriter. On submission day, I will have been working in this record, is some way, shape, or form, for about 351 days. I actually find it really strange knowing that, but I'm really glad I do. To me it represents a level of detail that wasn't present in my other records. You could call it a lack of consciousness. Just taking the time to write down the decisions I have made over the last year has made me a more confident songwriter. I think you'll hear it in the music.