During the 2016-2017 time frame, I had a number of songs I wanted to work on for a new album. Having over 200 songs stuck in a file drawer just collecting dust didn't seem very productive, so I reached out to a number of pro-level musicians I knew thru my good friend and fellow musician/composer Val Leventhal, who had worked with some top flight session players in the past. One of the musicians was Steve Hashimoto, a fabulous bass player who had an extensive recording and performing career. As he also did charts, I thought this would be golden opportunity to get down to it and bring some of these dust-gathering tunes to life. He collected a number of other musicians he had worked with, and I booked a session at my home recording studio.
After the initial 2017 recording sessions, I thought we were on track to complete the album, but due to the classic “unforeseen circumstances”, the project got put on hold. There were financial and personnel issues, and just a wide gap of situations that got in the way to make finishing it untenable at the time.
Using other musicians and actors, I had also just completed filming footage for a possible music video for one of the songs, “Letting It Go” at a beautiful location called Ravenstone Castle in Harvard, Illinois. (We actually even got a real bagpipe player for the intro! )
Everything seemed all good, and then, well, life happens. The timing just wasn't right, although we had the material and a group of super musicians in the lineup. As I mentioned, we had Steve Hashimoto on bass, and he brought in Pat Fleming on guitar, Mike Levin on woodwinds, Leandro Lopez Varady on keys, and Heath Chappell on drums and percussion. The sessions went very well, and we captured the essence of the feel of the tracks album I was hoping for. Due to scheduling issues, however, they were already committed to other projects and such, so local appearances and touring was out for the moment.
Fast forward to 2024. I was all set and ready to resume and finish the project when…. the car accident happened. I thought, “ok, the universe must be telling me something..”. Thru the darkness of struggling thru the many months of surgery, rehab, and recovery, I came to understand that the original meaning and inspiration behind the project was to get BEYOND whatever happens in our lives. In the material and in the artwork, I chose to represent the struggles and challenges everyone must go thru to get past whatever happens to us IRL. Now that the story can be told, the title track was originally inspired some years ago when I was looking for artwork for an as yet unnamed album that was to become BTGD.
I was scrolling thru the internet for different pictures and graphics for an idea I had, and came across this hauntingly beautiful picture of what I thought at the time was a hand drawn painting of an old temple buried in a hillside.
As it turned out, I learned that the above was really a photograph taken by a talented Irish photographer named Harry Thuillier Jr. Intrigued, I needed to know how the effect was created, so I dug into his life, and suddenly I had the inspiration for a whole new song that became the concept behind what was to turn into the title track “Beyond The Great Divide.” The photographic technique used was called “platinum-palladium development”, an old process that was used a century ago before modern techniques were developed. As a tie-in to the “crossing an impossible gulf”, I used another picture I found from the Indiana Jones film “The Last Crusade” for the front cover.
More to come. Stay tuned.