Driftin' and Tales of the Lost Islands CD

Driftin' is the first "theme or concept" musical project that I have released. The album chronicles many thousands of miles and a myriad ports of call along the way. This CD lays down in musical and lyrical form, a traveler's handbook of adventure and romance. Traveling is so firmly lodged in my bones and such a huge part of life that it was inevitable that this musical diary was written.

From my earliest memory, born within the sound of the sea, the oceans and the islands they contain have been a source of fascination. My brother Tom turned me on to the "Mutiny on the Bounty" trilogy of books when we were young lads and from that point on the fantasy of adventure on the high seas has been a constant.

Through the years, my first mate Catherine and I have sailed through some mighty storms, been beached once or twice, nearly drowned once or twice or maybe three times. We've also worked and played our way around the world and come and gone with some great memories: this is our offering to you... May you sail on smooth seas, may the jib you unfurl be your own, and may you always keep your rudder on the right side of the reef.

The story behind the songs...

1) Driftin - The song "Driftin'" was written onboard the sloop of Anton and Geraldine our friends, a perfect breeze, good company and the sea and sky as our companions.   Onboard that same ship I broke three strings and consequently re-worked the song "Bodden Town" into the version I ultimately recorded for the album of the same name.

2) Moon Over Cozumel  - A full moon, a reconciliation, a perfect voyage uninterrupted, a village by the sea, 1969 Volkswagens.  Music and water, the constant sound of the waves, a gift, a re-kindling, pain and yearning, the timeless hope of the waves against the sand.  Teak decks, brass rails, empty deck. The sea and sky as companion. There's a time machine buried in the sands of the island, pulling everything and everyone back 20 years.  A fountain of youth, a glaring reality, another island in the distance calling.

3) Sailing - The ultimate sailing tune written by Christopher Cross...  I can say no more.

4) Blue Skies, Blue Eyes - Did you ever just want to fly away, high in the sky, eye to eye with the eagles and higher, farther and faster, plunge into the crystal stream and come up refreshed and renewed? Of course you have.

5) Coconut Tree - People have survived hurricanes lashed to coconut trees.  They hold beaches together and provide food and drink for the grateful receiver ... and they don't need fertilizer.

6) I'm Goin' To Hawaii - This song started writing itself the first time I stepped onto the first of the archipelago known as the Hawaiian Islands.  There's something elemental in the deep yearning I felt about this place.  Me and almost every other yahoo who's trod on the place from the first Bora Boran who patriated the chain.  Each island has it's own distinct personality, "OS", energy, vibes, whatever you want to call it.  Aloha right back at 'cha.

7) Froot Joose - Although I'm not a total adherent to the all-natural lifestyle, I do confess that I love fruit juice and fruit-juice related products.  In the islands grows a tree called variously, pain tree, noni or cheesefruit.  You may call it ugly fruit or use it to polish your floors, it makes no difference to me, but the natives would line up at the fence asking for it.  At the corner of an old water cistern grew such a tree with an abundance of fruit.  Week after week we picked up buckets of this strange fruit and gave it away, the more we picked off the more it gave out.  Now here's the strange part: it stank like cheese, hence our desire to rid ourselves of it. The first hint of the fruit was actually pleasant, a mix of coconut and pine, but as the odd-shaped gnarly, hairy green fruit began to ripen, the smell changed to something strangely akin to an ill-used diaper-pail.  Yet, the natives regarded it with great respect, claiming that to drink its juice would render one pain free.  Apparently the taste was at least as offensive as the smell, yet the juice sold for a small fortune in the village health store. David DeMontagnac, our dear Jamaican neighbor told us it was also used to polish floors and how he remembered riding his housekeeper like a Toy Horse as a lad whilst she ground the fruit into the heart of mahogany floors to make them shine like glass, grinding and polishing the slimy fruit down deep into the grain with the fibrous half of a dried coconut husk.  Anyway that's the story of the noni-fruit.  This song is actually about pineapple juice.

8) First Kiss  - Sometimes it's just easier to say something in a song. You only get one first kiss.  Make it a good one.

9) Skye Boat Song  - Catherine used to sing this Scottish Aire, a capella, until I picked up a guitar one day and worked out the chords from her melody.  I'd never heard it before, but apparently it's an ancient song about Bonny Prince Charlie and the intrigue and heartbreak of the wars of old that still leave scars.

10) Warrior King - Geraldine, our lovely Irish friend, gave us a well wrought Irish drum that was enchanted by the fellow who made it. This was truly a war drum and was played on at least one occasion by an actual berserker. The drum was so frightening that it had to be returned to the manufacturer.  It's just a short sail from Skye over the Irish Sea to an island of enduring legend.

11) Rock Fever - Hat's off to Otis Redding.  I think I mind-melded with him one hot, frustrating day.  Some islands are hotter than others. Your coral keys are way more warm, sometimes dangerously so, than your big tall volcanics.  We were survivors when surviving wasn't cool.

12) Moonlight On Bodden Bay - Epilogue... dropping anchor with a moonlit night on Bodden Bay.