One of the greatest things about our history together is the chemistry we have as a group, though it’s sort of a chicken and egg thing. Have we been playing together so long because of the chemistry or do we have the chemistry because we’ve been playing so long. Whichever it is, it manifests itself through the music. One really good example of this is “Poetry in Motion”. The song was written over the course of two rehearsals, but the main harmonic, melodic and most of the lyrical structures were all created spontaneously.

Larry began playing the staccato quarter-note piano part and Aaron immediately jumped in with the driving drum part. Then Alex and Larry starting singing together in harmony the exact melodies that are in the finished product. After one verse Neil began playing the contrapuntal bass line and that stuck as a building element in the final product as well. Many of the final lyrics were spontaneously sung in the first playing as Alex has an amazing ability to adlib lyrics. The legato middle section, double chorus and some lyrics were added in the second rehearsal and the song was completed.

The most interesting part about this song lyrically is that it is made up almost entirely of our song titles. Each line contains at least one song title and many have two. Some of the songs are older, some are on the current CD and some are future songs. Some of the future songs are already completed and others are in various stages of their creation. We also noticed that the story created by all the song titles is about the way we write songs. So it’s a song we wrote using all of our song titles about the way we write songs.

In the “Memoirs” story arc, that is, in the life of the story’s protagonist, each of these song titles represent one of life’s milestones. As song writers, we see each song we create as a kind of marker, a way of memorializing an experience, an idea, and event or a feeling. So in this way, the song titles are a list of life experiences. It is as if our protagonist is collecting himself introspectively, recounting his life….past, present and future….in an effort to embolden himself to take on his inevitable journey, just as anyone might in the face of great change. His life is flashing before his eyes.