The Story of Lost in the Badlands

I started this album around 2003. After doing some rudimentary recording with a four track cassette system and experimenting with linking that to an early MIDI only version of Logic, I had purchased a digital audio interface and Cakewalk PA9 to set up my first DAW. With those tools and some MIDI drum loops I began composing what would become the first track. In preparing the final album I updated the drums on almost all tracks to use the same MIDI driven sampled kit I had been using for most recent tracks to give the drum sound some consistency.

1. Race to Desert Dawn: This was meant to be fast song in the style of Steve Morse and reminded me of a high speed drive through the desert in 1983 while on a road trip. We were heading west into the sunset, but the alliteration just wasn’t there. Poetic license.

2. Katie’s Dance: While I was working on this song, my young daughter Katie would always dance around and around, hence the title. This was the first track in whichI brought in some keyboards, adding an organ track. I replaced the original organ in my demo with a much better sampled Hammond.

3. Chiming In: Titled for the arpeggiated artificial harmonics used through the song I began using more varied instruments including acoustic guitar and piano for this ballad.

4. Prime Time: Named for it’s prime number odd time meter 7/4 - 5/4 opening riff, I had set out to come up with a good odd time meter song. I wrote this during some rare free time while my daughter was up the street on a play date.

5. Fragile Balance: I had just gotten a 7 string guitar and wanted to write something low and heavy. This is the only track that uses audio loops for the drums which were augmented by some cymbal crashes and other hits to fit the song better and accentuate certain rhythmic aspects. Of course, I needed to buy a 5 string bass for this - a good excuse to add to the collection.

6. Stomp Box: I had the basic background riff for this for a while and had been playing around with it trying to think of how to use it. It suddenly came to me as acoustic call and response form which came together very quickly. From start to finish, this song was done in less than two weeks, by far the fastest of anything on the album. The title derives from the kick drum stomp on the quarters.

7. Gathering Tempest: This is one where the title isn’t related to the song other than I had a list of potential song titles and this seemed to fit. It’s a typical song that started with the opening riff and I followed instinct by stopping and listening to where it seemed to want to go.

8: Mountain Streams: This started with the opening arpeggio riff for which I wanted to use a nylon string guitar. I ended up with a few parallel guitar tracks on that section. I also used more keyboards and orchestration that I ever had before and made use of new virtual MiniMoog and Mellotron instruments. The title simply seemed to fit the mood.

9: The Odyssey: This was started near the beginning of Covid in 2020. I had quite a few fragments of songs that I didn’t know how to finish into full songs. At the same time I wanted to compose a long form multi-movement prog epic, because that’s what a prog guitarist should do, right? I hit on the required pretentious theme of Homer’s works and used up all the bits that I already had and wrote quite a few more to complete the work. The original goal was to hit 10 minutes, but things expanded to just over 21 minutes. That’s about a maximum vinyl side. I wanted to keep the sounds of classic prog and used the keyboards of the early 70s throughout the song. I will admit to using more modern saturated metal guitar tones - so it ended up a bit more prog metal in places. Artistic license.