(warning - this is long!)

So ... exactly when did Perfect World begin? I guess that depends. In one sense, the first song was written in the late seventies. Specifically, "Life in Color", or at least the music to it, was worked out on my old Hammond M-3 in my parent's basement in Newnan, Ga. sometime around "79 I think. As I remember, one garage band I played in around "80, or "81 actually learned it and played it out a time or two, albeit with completely different words.

In another sense, you could make the argument that it really didn't start until spring of 2006 when I decided to "get back into music", purchased some basic recording gear, and started recording. I recorded "Sunshine Girl" first, followed by "Pieces of My Heart", "Jammin to Pieces", and "I Can't See the Reason", all by  early 2007. It was about then I decided to  go for the album thing, beefed up my gear, and got serious with it. I had also found Andy and Rod by then, who both made their initial appearances on "Pieces" and then sealed the deal with "Reason", which came out great.

In the truest sense, though, I think it started around "87 or so. I had gone through a rough break-up in "86 and moved to the other side of the country to escape. By summer of 87", I was married to Jeanifer and moving along in my new life, though it took a few more years to stabilize IMO. That period from about "85 to "89 is really where the album story was formed. It's also during this time that the key autobiographical songs, "Pieces", "Sunshine Girl", and "Perfect World" were written.

It's also around this period that I first got the idea for an album, even a concept album, about the happenings of those years. In my mind it was clear. It would be a story ... a simple story on the surface at least ... a story of infatuated "love" gone bad, falling into loneliness and misery and distrust, picking yourself up, finding "true love", and then living happily ever after. The songs seemed to fit various chapters in the story pretty well, and while there were many songs still to be written, I had pretty well fleshed out all the chapters that would need to be there, and even taken the first pass at the poem that told that story. Much of the orignal prose had endured into the final version that is performed so well on the album by Lesley Lafferty. You can read it here on the lyrics page.

At  a deeper level though, it was as much, even more, about finding myself as it was finding a new relationship. It was about not giving in to the directions that would have been easy to take with such a terrible break-up, but dragging myself out of the hole, remembering who I really was and what I really wanted, and then taking the right steps to get there, albeit with some stumbling along the way. By the time I had come up with new words to "Life in Color" and altered (a bit) the words to "Jennifer's Song", I was in the last year of work on recording the album and had the benefit of hindsight into those years and all the years that had passed since. The words of reflection  and counsel in those songs came very easily.