Karan Andrea

From the liner notes...

Ever since I was a young kid, when I would buy a record, the liner notes were the first thing I would go for, just as it began to play. Often before. I don't remember not doing it that way. It seemed that at the same time, those notes offered both the skeleton and the life force of the record, if you only knew how to read them properly.

The names in fine print - often only names without faces - songwriters, producers and arrangers, session musicians, band members, back-up singers... An entire layer of humanity resting in secrecy beneath the music, only partially visible (if at all) in fine print. Magicians, all, who bared their souls before microphones and at the controls, to create an avenue of escape for runners like me.

When I finally quit running long enough to put down my own stories, of course I thought about all those records that possessed me. Those songs that promised love, longing, lust, strength, loyalty, freedom, escape. The ones that spoke of pain so sharp it hurt to listen, but you had to - again and again.

Seems I was always drawn to the anti-heroes. The prisoners, the outlaws, the ones turned mean by mean lives. "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." How I miss Johnny Cash...

And the loner hurtling through the night, pleading urgently with the darkness. "Mr. State Trooper, please don't stop me."

And then there's soul. Ah! Deep Soul... Detroit, Memphis, Muscle Shoals. There is no other music that marries joy and pain quite so passionately.

It's a high standard, and you never believe you could ever live up to your heroes. The songs found me out there - all I did was drive out to meet them and haul 'em home.