Two Cities
The album was originally going to be called Chasing the Wind. It began innocently enough in January 2007, when my friend Mark and I drove from my actual hometown in northern New Jersey to my musical hometown of Buffalo, New York, to begin programming five new songs with my old friend and great musician, Ken Kaufman.
The first song we worked on was called So Far Behind, which became a big hit for me in 2009. But at the time, unknown to me, it was prophetic about how long this project would take to unfold.
I hadn’t written much in years. But suddenly, I found myself in the middle of a tidal wave of creativity unlike anything I had ever experienced.
By May, we reached our first tracking session with the band at a studio very appropriately named Audio Magic, and the project had already grown to fifteen songs. It was also that May when my relationship with someone who would become my closest friend — the great engineer and musician Mike Rorick — began. The studio named Audio Magic turned out to be very magic indeed.
By September, the project had grown to twenty-four songs. By November, at the third tracking session, it had grown to twenty-eight.
Then, my friend and drummer, Mike Caputy, suggested that I come down to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived. Nashville is a songwriter’s town, and I have always been, first and foremost, a songwriter.
Seven months and twenty-one songs later, I had a project containing nearly fifty songs — all becoming masters — spanning two cities that are about as different as any two places in America.
And the sound of each city was so different.
Both were great. Both were unique. But they might as well have been from two different planets.
Buffalo is northeast. Gritty. In your face. Simple and real.
Nashville is genteel. Polite. Polished. Masterfully professional.
When I tried to assemble the songs into a single album, it felt like a musical civil war was breaking out and they refused to live in the same world.
I remember thinking, "How could I ever reconcile these Two cities…"
Then, Oh my goodness. That’s it. I’ll call it Two Cities.
And just like that, Two Cities was born. It'll be a double album — one disc for each place.
Two Cities – Nashville.
Two Cities – Buffalo.
Now came the real work.
I had to arrange, mix, add to, subtract from, and shape twenty-six unique songs, each with its own personality and demands. And this is where my dear friend — and truly great engineer and musician — Mike Rorick became indispensable.
Mike and I had met at that first tracking session in May 2007, and my respect for him had already grown tremendously. But I had no idea just how important he would become to this project — and to me.
I decided to finish the Nashville side in Buffalo so everything could be centralized. Mike and I began mixing, remixing, editing, recutting parts, adding, deleting, muting — whatever the songs needed.
Sometimes I would call Mike and sing a new guitar part idea directly into his voicemail.
A day or two later, the part would be there.
We worked long distance — he in Buffalo, me in New Jersey — talking through mixes and ideas over the phone. This process began in late 2008. And now, as I write this in late 2010, it is nearly complete.
The final song we worked on was from an entirely new project with Steve Miller Band drummer Gary Mallaber, who was producing a track called Forever and a Day. Gary asked if it could be included on Two Cities.
It became one of my biggest records — and the final song completed for the album.
Two Cities was released in July 2011 and, a few months later, was named one of the best albums of 2011 by John Shelton Ivany of the Hard Rock Café.
A city, by its nature, is concrete. Cold. Utilitarian.
What gives a place its soul are the people who inhabit it.
For me, Buffalo and Nashville became warm, beautiful places because of the loving, generous people who welcomed me as one of their own.
Robbie. Mike. Jerry. Kenny…
I could go on for a while. These people are the lifeblood. The heart. The soul. The laughter.
And the smile I will always see…
On the face of Two Cities. Please take a listen!
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