Birds

birds volume 4 number 1
the year 1990 shook my life upside down
like a snow globe.
rehearsals for the David Bowie Sound &
Vision World Tour began in new york city
that january. the tour poured across
the world for the rest of the year.
the tour had been hilarious fun.
we played in 27 countries.
108 shows in screaming stadiums.
it was a first class private jet ride with
Capt. David Bowie at the helm.
I hung out with Jeff Beck.
had tea with Paul and Linda.
divorced Margaret Flowers.
fell in love with Martha Webb.
made loads of money, paid off my financiers
(with commissions and taxes, of course)
and still had a little money left with which to start over.

by the new year of 1991 the tour was history.
I was alone and it was the first time I had been on my own
in life for more than 14 years.
my girlfriend Martha was in graduate school in florida.

I bought a little white Honda CRXsi (I still have it) and rented a crooked little cottage right on Lake Delavan in Wisconsin. the walls on the outside were cockeyed but I loved it there tucked away in the woods beside a lake. the cottage had one big open room on the downstairs level that morphed into a living room with connected kitchen with a countertop/bar affair to eat on. there was nothing much in the rooms. a sectional couch. a baby grand piano named Howard (I still have him too.) a set of Ayotte drums (still have 'em), a couple of guitars, a tray of candles, and a lot of plants. very nice large plants.
gee, I wish I still had those plants.

the living room/kitchen had wall-size windows gazing out at the lake which ran past my backyard. across the lake you could see more bungalows. the most vivid plethora of birds hung out on the deck. big red woodpeckers and nuthatches. songbirds. must have been the trays of seeds and fruit I left out daily.

upstairs were two tiny bedrooms and a bathroom with a shower. at night in bed with the window open I could hear trains wailing in the distance. probably my favorite sound in the whole world.

I never felt more like an artist in my life. alone and inspired.
in the daytime I sat around practicing and writing.
went to bed early. woke up with the birds.
I wrote songs on the piano. they poured out like wine.
I wrote the inner revolution album.
songs about solitude. I walk alone.
songs about happy love. big blue sun.
and while I was at it, a song about birds.

gradually my sidekick engineer rich denhart brought over enough gear to record demos of what I was writing. the first third of this track is my original piano and vocal demo. next comes the original backing track demo recorded while looking out at the lake. the last third was done in a real studio Royal Recorders in nearby Lake Geneva, but this particular arrangement which relied more on guitars was discarded for the piano-heavy version on inner revolution.

in two days spring is official
and there are birds everywhere I see.

instruments and vocals: adrian
engineer: rich denhart
assistant engineer: dan harjung
demo recorded at home on march 24, 1991
backing track recorded at Royal Recorders, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
on august 8, 1991
length:7:03