humane?

I was looking to do something different than all the bands I was hearing in the clubs around Boston at the time, and I was finding it very hard to find a guitarist that wasn't going to try to cram every note on the fret board into each measure of a song. Then I heard about a keyboardist who was likely to be looking for a new band.

Joel Simches turned out to be much more than a keyboardist. He was a talented drummer, bass player, and last but not least, had experience as a recording engineer. I had hit the jackpot when I found him. Joel was able to take my rough concepts and vague ideas and turn them into melodic structure. After he joined the band I stopped looking for guitarists thinking, "this will be the something different." "A band who's sound was formed around keys and bass guitar."

The 'humane?' recording was where I was just figuring out what I wanted to do musically. When we finished 'riverflow' I was beginning to understand the level of intensity that I wanted to infuse in my future writing. I also learned that when you have a bad head cold, reschedule your vocal session or you will regret it later.

Strangely enough 'beethoven was my lover' was the track that really took on a life of it's own. People really liked this song about two fictional children from a little cartoon that I had drawn, and how they took on the world under their own terms. It was actually very tongue-in-cheek and a bit surprising how popular it became. The original version on 'humane?' featured Joel Simches playing on the harpsichord, and the song was re-recorded later for the 'sky clad' album with Christian Gilbert playing classical guitar.