“Where does the light go when you close your eyes? Where does the moon go when the sun doesn’t rise?” (Goodbye Song)
When I was a kid, we listened to albums. And an album was a lot more than just songs. An album was songs connected by a concept, an A side and a B side, with cover art and liner notes. So I was pleased when Rich Luca asked me to write these liner notes. Pleased, but also confused. Where exactly do you put liner notes if not on the back of an album cover? What is the purpose of liner notes in a digital world?
The process of creating music is transformational. So it’s fitting that these are songs about transformation. Rich said to me, “My songs are all about the in-betweens.” Not about the being. About the becoming.
“How do you get from Memphis to Heaven?” (Memphis to Heaven)
Talk about your in-betweens. The journey from ashes-to-ashes, from dust-to-dust. Life is the grandest in-between of them all. These are songs about life, and about the people who matter to us during our own brief moment in the in-between.
“Why complicate the moment, Why complicate the time, Let’s be here now.” (This Crazy Thing)
You’re going to work, earning a living, playing it safe and then, one day, just like that, playing it safe isn’t enough any more. So you change. You allow yourself to become who you were always meant to be. In the liner notes for Alice’s Restaurant, in 1967, Harold Leventhal wrote, “It was just a little over a year ago that Arlo Guthrie bounced into my office and announced, ‘Kid – I’ve just decided to quit working for you and have you work for me.’” And that’s how I imagine it for Rich, facing his own transformation. “Kid,” he says to himself, “I don’t work for you anymore,” Rich staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, “from now on you work for me.” These are songs about becoming. Becoming a lover. A husband. A father. A friend. Becoming a songwriter-singer. Being is easy. Becoming is hard, no matter what the pop songs say.
“Don’t listen to the things people say to you. You’ll only regret that which you never do.” (Silence Says So)
I have said in other places that creativity is the capacity to look at the same thing everyone else is looking at (or, in this case, to listen to the same thing everyone else is listening to) and to see (or hear) something different.
“I wanna know what’s different for you, what’s different from me” (You Are the Only One)
Rich Luca and I are of a similar age. We probably grew up listening to many of the same musical influences. We listened to the same music, but Rich was hearing something else. That something else has been fermenting for decades until a year or so ago, when Rich looked in the mirror and decided it was time to do something with all that music.
And now, Rich has decided to let us take a peek inside his head, to let us hear the music that he hears. So take a listen and then send Rich a message. Tell him that his music needs to be in barrooms and in juke joints, in coffee houses and clubs, on your iPod, in your CD player, and especially on your turntable. Tell him to put the songs out on vinyl, an album, with an A side and a B side, with cover art, and, of course, with a proper place to read these liner notes.
“It’s the night that holds your soul. It’s the night that takes control.” (Somewhere Burns a Fire)
