A new performance of a piece I originally composed in 1995.

Front Porch Sparrow

My first completely new song in a decade. Written during the spring of 2011 and recorded between May and September.

Go From Here

There's a little bit of a story behind this recording.

In late 2009, I found a lump in my throat and ended up scheduled for thyroid surgery the following January. I knew that this surgery carried with it a small but significant chance of permanent vocal damage. The possibility of a future without singing I thought I could face, since I could shift my focus to instrumental music; but I still had a couple of old songs I'd only recently finished writing, part of my "Unfinished Business" project, and I wanted them to be heard in my own voice. Now, suddenly, I felt like I was running out of time.

And the problem wasn't just one of time. At this point, thanks to some incurable software issues, I did not have a fully functional recording setup. I'd been planning to rehabilitate my studio and get it working again, but now I had only a few weeks before my surgery and no time for such an ambitious project. It was now or, potentially, never.

So, during the Christmas break of 2009, I did what I could. Limping along with a minimal configuration, I plugged in a microphone and recorded a simple guitar-and-vocal performance of one of those songs, "The Way It's Supposed To Be." The guitar part was disposable: the idea was just to capture a recording of my voice while I still had it, with no thought of attempting a full production of the song. There would be time for that later.

I couldn't help thinking of George Harrison's final album: terminally ill, he recorded his guitar parts and vocals before he died, leaving his collaborator Jeff Lynne with instructions on how to finish the album after his death. Like Harrison, I was planning for the possibility that I might have to finish this song posthumously, so to speak.

"The Way It's Supposed To Be" remained in that skeletal state for more than a year and a half. My voice was indeed left impaired by the surgery, though it remains to be seen how much of that impairment will be permanent. By July 2011, though, it had recovered sufficiently that I was able to record a new song, "Go From Here"; that experience left me motivated to do some more music, and I decided it was time to see what I could do with "The Way It's Supposed To Be."

Although the acoustic-guitar track had been intended as a throwaway placeholder, I decided to keep it (imperfect though it is) as the backbone of the song. The vocals, needless to say, are also from the 2009 recording, since that performance is now is now beyond my ability. But the rest of the recording is new, completed in late summer and fall of 2011.

The Way It's Supposed To Be

My Christmas song from 1996. I originally wrote and recorded this song in a couple of hours on a December morning in 1995, although this is a second take recorded almost a year later. I remixed this track in 2009 as a candidate for my "Leaving It Behind" compilation, but ultimately left it off because I thought a seasonal song was not a good fit. So here it is, orphaned but not forgotten. 

Robert R. Berry

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