I actually have a lot to say about this, which isn't super-common. Most of the songs on this album are approximately 20 years old. I wrote them when I was 20-21 and I'm definitely 41 now. If you think to yourself, "this sounds like music from the 2000s," that would be the reason. I (largely) kept as close to my original vision as possible in terms of production, because one of my most enduring traits is a love of heavy guitars.

So at the time these ideas were written, I was in a band called The Great and Powerful Gizmo, and we had just finished recording our first album. When I passed that first album to my friend Cameron to listen, he said something like, "It's a bit like a concept album, but the concept is just fuzzy guitars." This comment was sandwiched between a bunch of compliments, but it stuck out to me, because it clarified something I KNEW was missing, but hadn't fully identified. There was no theme. It was just a collection of songs written around the same time. This is the same Cameron with whom I started the first band I was ever in. We used to spend hours coming up with ideas for albums and song titles while sitting in science class together, so it stands to reason that he was the one who caught that detail.

From that point on, I started curating albums around instrumental, lyrical, and timbral themes (not all at the same time, mind you). So the flurry of subsequent songs I wrote got placed in holding cycles until there was a unifying theme that could connect them all. And the themes were not super-solid at first. But also, not everything had a place where it would fit. The first theme bucket that filled up was the next album we recorded, and so on. At the time we recorded our second album, I had piles of songs in 3 different themes in the works. One of them happened get wrapped up in a single drunken night. That was "Why the Luggage?" and then we moved on. I have lots of unfinished songs, but even more songs that are kind-of-complete but don't have an album to call home. A veritable island of misfit toys!

These tracks are almost all parts of that collection from that time. There's one much earlier (99?) melody in there, and 2 later ones (04ish), and lots of combinations to fill in incomplete arrangements. Three of these initial ideas, when they were fresh, got instrumental demos recorded and sent to Cousin Jason (Gizmo's guitarist) with a note about not being able to come up with any good lyrics. It was a period of much, well-justified self doubt, in that I had been writing for long enough to understand how bad it was to commit to lyrics which a future version of yourself would despise. That was the main obstacle for me, and Jason helped as much as he could, but we never ended up finalizing or rehearsing them. The first and last tracks were two of the ones I made demos for, and I referred to them as "the bookends" right up until a year ago.

From an instrumental perspective, "the bookends" are also curiously connected to Cousin Jason. When we were active in Gizmo, he was also a classical guitarist and used to play shows all the heck over Oklahoma City. Sometimes when I visited him, I got to travel around with him and listen to his brilliant performances. Sometimes when he visited me, I got to record him playing. One day while I was listening to him play Bach's "Sleepers Awake" or uhh BWV 645, I was like "THAT COULD BE HEAVY." And it can be heavy, indeed! While I was playing with that chord progression, it morphed into the intro and outro to the bookends, in its different permutations. The inclusion of my ramshackle 3/4 adapted version of the actual Bach piece was a subsequent idea that seemed to complete the cycle, and I've already apologized to Bach for it. The title for that one is stolen from a Soundcloud comment (I think it was Gordon M) that was too good not to use. Baching Up the Wrong Tree. Get it?

So now we've covered the most important things I wanted to tell you. The album sounds like the 2000s for a reason, Cameron and Cousin Jason are both awesome. But why now? About 4 years ago, when I was working on the Time Machine Chronicles, I finished up another oldish (but not AS old) project titled "Wren Hollow Wrens" that was in a similar incomplete holding cycle in my mind. At that point, I turned my attention back to the very old melodies I have been carrying in my noggin for 20 years, with the idea that I might knock them out too and have a nearly fresh start in songwriting. But I quickly got distracted by new music I was writing, because I'm 50% squirrel, and I never did find a good place for them.

After that project was done, I started in earnest writing lyrics, completing arrangements, and recording instruments for Parkwood. I did get distracted a few more times, with Perpendicularism, Typewriter samples, and Heracleion. Funny enough, 20 years is enough time to change a person's vocal range. I learned this when I recorded the tracks in their original keys and COULD NOT record the vocals. It was brutal. Many of these songs have been re-recorded 2-3 times just trying to figure out where I could best sing them haha.

Lyrically, Parkwood pulls from the same concept as Wren Hollow, which I think is best described as world-building centered around obtained historic artifacts. For Wren Hollow, it was a vintage t-shirt. For Parkwood, it's a school lunch tray, whose art is featured in the cover design. Parkwood was a real high school in Joplin in the 60s, 70s and maybe 80s. Where Wren Hollow's fictional town was loosely based around an imagined version of my grandparent's Carthage (Aunt Ruth, the desk pen set, the brother sent to war), Parkwood's is based around an imagined version of my parent's Joplin. That's the foundation. On top of that, I have overlaid an absolute mishmash of memories from my own childhood, generally centered around the many hours spent with cousin Jason in Joplin. The boy with the nunchucks, the bay window, the maple tree, and the hours spent killing time on our great grandmother's front porch. At times, it's also a scathing self-reflection on my worst attributes - and about memory in general - its pliability and its tendency to highlight those attributes. It's built like a tree and also about trees.

I'd like to extend my sincerest thanks to Cousin Jason and Cameron for giving an early listen to these recordings and providing helpful feedback, and to Kahlief Steele for lending his time reviewing the second-to-final mix and telling me the vocals were still too quiet. They were. I think they're better now, but we'll see.