In the last two years I've performed in many places.  One thing is for sure.  Getting to know my own American culture has been interesting, sometimes surprising, and always gratifying.  When last summer I played in Flora, IL, I learned how close communities can be, and how when you put yourself on the line to give your all out for these people, they give more back to you.  To have folks after concerts in Springfield, OH, and in Pittsburg, PA come up after the shows, buy CD's and shake your hand saying how much they enjoyed the music never gets old.  When kids spontaneously start dancing near the grand piano at Indiana Beach, its a feeling you can only remember and cannot describe.

I feel an optimism, a force of goodness, a unified spirit of good will when in Warrenville, IL I ask the audience for help in naming a song and after it's performance "BEAUTIFUL, SAD SONG" becomes the title.  What a time to be living in.

The challenges of the last few years have been big ones, and with a good feeling for the future prevailing in most, there have been slow, sometimes arduous but inevitable strides made.  Other challenges are like other things in life that are constant and you do everything you can to make the best of uncontrollable, unforeseen events and circumstances.

That is what the thrust of SECRET LIFE is about.  Empathy, yearning to inspire when some would relinquish or pity without seeing the good in all of us, regardless of our physical state.  To look beyond, to bring those we encounter to also look beyond and laugh a little, realizing how short it is we are here and the process of life and our fellow humans is of utmost importance.

We do have this if we can imagine where we go next and here is music that's a culmination of the efficacy of that spirit.