Kipp: “This is a very cathartic song for me personally. It’s about some personal stuff I've gone through since the last album. I'm glad people are reacting so strongly to it. It's a little odd arrangement-wise and that's part of what we like about it. Starting with a chorus, half the verse being sung by the background vocals. Michael's solo is burning as well. Can't wait to open shows with it!”
“Rewind” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Mark: “This is a song I just had to write, about having a major fallout with my best friend. We were always together and more like brothers than anything else. Without going into detail, I hope someday he can see the truth in what happened and we can resume where we left off.”
Michael: “I wrote the bridge on this one in my hotel room in Amsterdam the day before the tracking session. I felt it needed a release in order to really pay off by the end.” Kipp: “Cool song. Ambrosia meets Toni Braxton meets Venice.”
“Too Late For Me Now” (Lead Vocal: Kipp)
Michael: “Kipp’s original idea when he showed it to me was to make it more of a grooving song like “Taxman” or “Most of Us.” I felt that in order to deliver a melody and topic that simple and familiar, the track should have a twist to it. For some reason I came up with this Bolero, Mexican kind of approach to the track which worked instantly.”
Kipp: “It was a nice opportunity to work with Tony Asher who is an old family friend. He co-wrote ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Wouldn't It Be Nice?’ with Brian Wilson. It's actually a song about how hopeless you can feel when you have children and love them so muchthat it hurts.”
“Joey” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Kipp: “I was listening to my car radio one day while we were picking songs for this album and ‘Joey’ by Concrete Blonde came on. It was always one of my favorites and I knew that Mark had absolutely loved that band and song. I mentioned it to the fellas and they loved the idea. We mellowed it out to fit the vibe of this album and make it different from the original. It's got a nice feeling to it.”
Michael: “We tried a more electric guitar approach, but with the plan in place to make a more acoustic, organic record, I made up a Bruce Hornsby style riff on the piano that we all liked, and we built the track around that.”
“Radio Game” (Lead Vocal: Kipp)
Kipp: “A fun way for us to vent some of our frustrations about the downside of trying to get a hit song. Kind of going for a Van Morrison meets Bob Dylan thing. Great initial groove from Mark Harris.”
Mark: “All true, and we have the scars and bruises to prove it!”
“Not Enough for You” (Lead Vocal: Kipp)
Michael: “Inspired by a progression that Pat brought to us from an old Peter, Paul and Mary song. We added to the music, and then after being stuck on what the melody and words should be about, Kipp came up with an idea that almost wrote itself. Another personal favorite of mine.”
“Bittersweet Life” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Mark: “This song was a collaboration between a couple of Dutch singer/songwriters and ourselves. They had written it especially for us. The words they had written were great,but very hard for us to totally grasp as being our own. So we re-wrote the song about how I saw my mother after my father had passed. My parents were so in love and she missed him so much, but she knew she had thirteen children, thirty-nine grandchildren and ten great grandchildren to live for. Her heart gave us two more years, and then she died on the same exact day he died, but two years apart. Their love was and is an inspiration for us all to try and find and follow.”
Michael: “The lyric ‘The song that leaves me weak” is relating to one of her favorite songs, “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” by Bryan Adams, from the movie ‘Don Juan Demarco.’ ”
“Ashes in the Snow” (Lead Vocal: all)
Kipp: “An old family favorite from Seals and Crofts' little heard first album. That album was a big part of our childhood. Our older brothers used to perform this song at weddings and concerts in the 70's. Originally, we were entertaining the idea of a whole album of cover tunes and this was one of the first considerations. We eventually started writing so many new tunes that we scrapped the cover album idea, but this one stayed because we love it so much. Singing it with that string section, in that church, made us really think about our family and the many years of memories with that song.”
Michael: “We recorded this all live. Guitar, four vocals and ten string players all at the same time. Now that’s Rock and Roll!”
“Life is Like a Movie” (Lead Vocal: Kipp)
Michael: “I always wanted to write a Little Feet type of song. The band jammed the groove at a Vista writing trip and Kipp had the idea for the lyrics.”
Kipp: “A lot of tumultuous, improbable things have happened to us over the years (good and bad), in our family and in our band, and I'm always going around saying it's like a movie. So I put it in words.”
“The Lost Weekend” (Lead Vocal: Kipp)
Kipp: “My wife and I have known each other for over twenty years. This is about how we got back together after having been apart for a few years. “
Michael: “It reminds me of ‘That’s the Way It Is” from our ‘Born and Raised’ album. Very Venice.”
“The Romance That Never Was” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Mark: “This is a song I wrote with our friend and sometimes keyboardist Chris Horvath. It's about being so close and yet so far from the one who could be ‘The One.’ It's about good intentions, but circumstances never working out the way they should, and true love being just around the corner.”
“Jenny” (Lead Vocal: Kipp)
Kipp: “A song Michael and I wrote in 1984 about the first time I really fell in love. The only thing I could compare my rush of feelings to was the feelings I had for music. How music affected my life and emotions. We've always loved this song and played it occasionally over the years, but never actually recorded it. The words are a bit naive or young-sounding in places, but it is very honest and innocent. Kind of captures a time in your life that never comes again.”
Mark: “It brings a sweet innocent vibe to this album which has so much dark and light.”
“One More Song” (Lead Vocal: all)
Kipp: “We tried to capture some of the feelings we have during a raucous encore at a Venice show. The communal, high energy buzz that makes us all feel so lucky and alive.”
Mark: “It's a kind of thank you to the fans for hanging with us and spreading the word.”
BONUS CD SONGS
“Easy to Be Hard” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Mark: “This song is from the soundtrack to the controversial Boadway hit "Hair." It was recorded by 3 Dog Night and I've always loved it. It's still very timely and has great lyrics, melody and harmonies.”
“We’re Okay” (Lead Vocal: Michael)
Michael: “During one of my pre-production trips to Holland, I was approached to cowrite with a prominent Dutch songwriter, Han Kooreneef. He has written some very successful songs for Marco Borsato and others. While sharing some stories and background information with each other, we discovered we had something very much in
common. Both of us were lucky to have two children each, but sadly no parents around to share them with. He started playing some beautiful chords on the piano and I started singing melodies about the unfortunate situation we were both in: We both loved our parents, who are gone, and we love and cherish our children who are here, but the two will never meet in this lifetime. As I started singing ideas, I began to tear up. I knew we had a beautiful song about a sad situation. I left back for the states soon after that and on the plane I cried my eyes out and wrote all the lyrics before I landed in LA. In the end, the message of the song is, ‘This is really sad for all involved, but in the end we’re okay, don’t worry about us.’ ”
Kipp: “So sweet and heartfelt. This is straight from Michael's heart. He's so good at those simple ways of stating honest feelings that could be trite or sound too vulnerable, but he does it in a way that just sounds real. Just like his vocal. The first time he showed Mark and I the idea for the song, we were in tears. We all loved our parents so much.”
“Katrina” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Mark: “After the loss of our niece Katrina, I woke up and had this song fully finished in my head. I had dreamed the melody and words and only had to sit up, grab a pen and paper, and an hour hater it was finished. I really felt like this song wrote itself I recorded it the very next day, in time for Katrina's family and friends to hear it at her memorial. It was very lush, with harmonies, instruments and lots of production. Then I sang the song live last year during my solo tour in Holland, with only my vocal and Nick Bult on piano. Michael, Kipp and Pat came to one of the shows and heard the song in a totally different way. They said, "That needs to be on our next album, just like that: Real and vulnerable.”
“O Bahia” (Lead Vocal: Mark)
Mark: “This is a song from a 1976 film soundtrack LP that I heard in 1980 at my friend Susea's house. She made me a cassette that day and I listened to it religiously until I learned it phonetically. My Dutch friend Sylvia heard me sing it a capella at one of my parties and videotaped it. She found a 45 single of it on the web and shipped it to me. I sang it on my solo tour, and when the rest of the band heard it, they agreed that we needed something like that on our next album. I knew what some of the lyrics meant, with my limited Spanish from High School, but I didn’t learn its full meaning until my good friend Jeff brought over his Brazilian girlfriend and we laid out in my backyard by my pool and she translated the whole thing to me.”
Kipp: “I absolutely LOVE this song! The way Mark sings the Portuguese lyric, the very Brazilian melody. Beautiful. I could hear it a million times.”
