Album #3: When Leftovers of Albums Also Have Some Leftovers, You Get this…

Having become the “spillover to the spillover” record in the series, my third album, “Opening Act,” is rather appropriately (if ironically) entitled, consisting of continuous rewrites, newly-written works, and rearrangements too.

With some of my all-time favorite writes, many of which are still under construction, reproduction and arrangement, this album reflects more evolution, of an almost progressive rock nature, while keeping within my own “Punkly” style, and featuring some of my past and current titles, a duality arranged into one contiguous sound, reflecting an opening act vibe with a headliner feel.

An album title that, conceptually, would have been supposed to be the first in the series, “Opening Act” outpours something new, appending itself to a concept more familiar, a strategy “opening acts” in music rely on, leveraging audience demographics to hear a new sound and provide a future sound to be excited about.

This concept was born out of my thrill of having discovered live music, from the earliest concerts I had attended, and the fact that some of the best bands I discovered and whose material I’ve fallen in love with and purchased were, indeed, opening acts to headliners I went to see. And, sometimes, these “opening acts” were in bargain bins in stores like “Record World”, “Record Town”, and even Times Square’s former “Virgin Megastore”.

From these experiences, I have discovered some of my foremost influences in writing including names like Tom Kimmel (opening for Heart), Rhythm Corps (opening for Pat Benatar), Utopia (opening for the Tubes), Honeymoon Suite (opening for .38 Special), David Broza (opening for Steve Perry), Marillion (opening for Rush), and, my all-time favorite songwriting influencers, Del Amitri, whose album “Waking Hours” I so serendipitously found on cassette in a bargain bin at Record World on clearance for $1.99, an album which changed my life and songwriting direction for years to come! I am hard-pressed to think of an album I have listened to more times over than that one.

From such songs taken from my archival musings as “Hollywood” and “My Christmas Eve,” to newly-crafted innovations such as “A Punked Up Fairy Tale, “I Can Hear the Sunshine Through the Rain” and “Footprints On the Moon“, Opening Act is anything but an act to “just pass the time until the headliner takes the spotlight”. It is itself a spotlight in its own right, one of the future and continuous direction of my writing. All culminating in the powerful and driving thrust of “So Close to the Truth,” demarking another turning point in the direction of my style and, appropriately, a song that came to me in a dream. As a late entry, there was even room for an encore, one of my favorite all-encompassing truths I’ve written about, in “Found Your Words In Me.”

Tracks

01 Hollywood
02 My Christmas Eve (Also Not a Christmas Song!)
03 Footprints On the Moon
04 Toast Without You
05 Sunshine Through the Rain
06 So Close to the Truth
07 HB4U
08 A Punked Up Fairytale
09 Found Your Words In Me

Demo Available to VIP Members Only