“Ethereal Night” is my latest collection of “postcards to the world”- five songs inspired by life in early 2025, with a total running time of under 30 minutes. All of these songs were created and recorded in the late night hours, from January to March of 2025.

Ethereal Night- a gently rhythmic, slightly lonely sounding song that came into existence after a few late night stargazing walks. As I get older, I find more and more inspiration in the night sky surrounding my home in rural Indiana. "Ethereal Night" came to be after a couple of these late night walks, during an unseasonably warm spell in early March.

Shadow of Surrender- this is a re-recording of the track from my 1995 album “The Hidden Rift”. Since January of this year, I’ve found myself thinking of how 2025 is the 30th anniversary of the release of “The Hidden Rift” (also the 25th anniversary for “To the Shores of Heaven” and the 20th Anniversary of “Lingering Light”). I tend not to “look back” in regards to my albums; I’m content to leave them in the time they were created, as opposed to dragging them out every 10 years or so for a “deluxe anniversary” re-release (which, as a listener, usually strikes me as a not-too-subtle money grab on the part of the artist).

Since I started creating these shorter EPs in early 2021, I’ve included a song from my past catalog if it resonated with the feelings in my life at the time, and “Shadow of Surrender” fit well with these themes of late night exploration. The original track was written on a very late night in March of 1994, and was re-recorded for this EP on a late night in March of 2025.

Aurora- We were pleasantly surprised by two Aurora Borealis events recently: one in October 2024, and the other in March of 2025. “Aurora” is built around a loop of “paintbrush guitar” (strumming the strings of a guitar with a paintbrush), and features a single glissando guitar line played in real time over the top- an apt representation of the majestic beauty of the night sky (the main loop) as observed, in wonder, by one guy in the woods (the glissando line)

Farther- this song was created on January 26th, 2025- the second anniversary of my father’s departure from this world (hence the title “Farther”- fairly close in spelling to “Father”, which is the kind of wordplay my dad would probably have appreciated).

Anniversaries like this are tricky things; you certainly don’t want to reduce the entirety of a person’s life down to a couple of dates (birth and death), but time sure seems to slow, from its way too-fast pace, when one of those dates circle around.

On the first anniversary of my dad’s death, I recorded an improvisation that will remain between him and myself. On the second anniversary of his death, things went a fair bit differently; even though I was using my tried and true setup (eBow guitar lines into a looper and a reverb- just like the atmospheres I’ve often created, going back to my first album in 1993), there was just “something” there that resonated with me. And it impacted me enough that I decided NOT to listen to it for a month, just to make sure I wasn’t listening with prejudiced ears.

One month turned into seven weeks, and I pulled “Farther” out of my hard drive’s depths. Not too surprisingly, it still connected in the way it did while I was creating it. And it felt right to send it out into the world in this collection.

And You Will Never Know- it would seem pretty ironic to title a song “And You Will Never Know”, and then write a short essay on what that song is about- so I’m leaving this as-is.