SCENES FROM THE FLOOD: DIGITAL BOOKLET

Click here to download the “Scenes From The Flood” Digital Booklet

28 PAGES CONTAINING:

* Song avatar images for all 18 tracks (artwork by Daniel Wagner for Nightowl Studios)

* Full song performance credits

* Song lyrics for “Everything And Nothing”, “Army Of The Black Rectangles” and “Angles & Exits”

* Imagery and portraitry by Michael Mesker (for Electric Red) and Manuela Haeussler

T H A N K Y O U

for purchasing “Scenes From The Flood” on vinyl!

(scroll down for DEMOS)

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SELECT DEMOS from SCENES FROM THE FLOOD

“Volunteer State (Demo)“

The first full song I wrote for this album was a straight-up optimistic instrumental-guitar-driven road trip song. Eventually I sent this to Joe Satriani and tried to explain what i wanted to do with it. He listened politely and did a bunch of things I never would have thought of, improving the song well beyond anything you’ll hear here. He even changed the melody – listen closely. (There’s also a very mediocre BB demo guitar solo on this. Imagine Joe Satriani hearing it!)

“Always Worth It (Demo)“

This classic prog piece needed had a lot of different starring “characters” and drastic scene changes, and I did my best on the demo to make that as obvious as possible. Griff Peters took my simple melody and turned it into a guitar orchestra in the end, and Rick Musallam provided a proper opening clean lead and plenty of funky single-note comping. This one has a demo guitar solo I kind of like, just because it’s so bent. Fortunately Teddy Kumpel knew what I meant by “bent” and, well, bent it further.

“Lookout Mountain (Demo)“

Many aspects of the Tibetan Singing Bowls from the demo made it on the final, but certainly not any of the baritone guitar I fumbled through here. I really had no idea what would happen when I picked up a bari and tuned it to open Bdom7, but somehow after a day of futzing around, this came out. Compare this to what Mike Dawes eventually did with it – he really took some raw clay here molded it into something far, far better.

“The Flood (Demo)“

How do you demo a piece with a five-part structure that is designed to be a two-person piano/baritone guitar collaborative improvisation against an electronica background? It’s ok, I didn’t know either, and I’m the writer. I imagined What Would Janet Feder Do? and just tried to provide a template for what eventually happened in the studio. Janet not only invented her parts, but offered a couple of key production elements that improved crucial moments of the final piece. We actually ended up cutting it a bit slower than this, which I think was a good idea.

“World Class (Demo)“

This took me a month to demo out! But there’s something about this demo that really charms me to this day; the original intent is really strong here. We can laugh again here about John Petrucci having to listen to my demo guitar solo (what he did on the final is astounding), and Rishabh Singh having to interpret a sitar part that was written on a keyboard. Ray Hearne took these meticulously programmed drums (set to level “impossible”) and made them something really special in real life. The strings, the guitars, the sitar…I spared no OCD expense in trying to make the demo something that made sense, because it’s my belief that with a piece this big, if you don’t understand every aspect of it, nobody else will.

“Sweet Water/Let Go Of Everything (Demo)“

I went into this knowing that it would be Guthrie Govan driving the entire album home on this song, and once again, it took me a month to really get the demo right. I didn’t bother with acoustic guitars; the acoustics on the demo are keyboards. But the thing is, with a song like this, I had such a strong idea of what it was supposed to be, I really had to be careful and not fall into the demo-itis trap. It wasn’t easy! You can hear the guitar is super David Gilmour-y on the demo – we did a take like that and eventually threw the whole thing in the trash because it wasn’t Guthrie enough. And the end product is way better for it. As for “Let Go Of Everything”, a close listen will pick up a few subtle post-demo changes we made to try and bring the album to a suitable conclusion. (And yes, that guitar solo is me, and for once, I don’t mind it.)