“Seven Cities” represents a sort of musical road trip across North America and back, exploring love and loss against the backdrop of urban skylines, small towns, and scenic western vistas. The name calls back the expedition of Coronado, who searched all over North America for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold but ended up finding only a rich and beautiful land, a treasure which was ultimately more valuable than gold. In the same way, the songs in “Seven Cities” tell stories of our own personal searches for gold and how we rarely find it but sometimes manage to find ourselves in the process.

Track list:

1. “The Way We Started” – a musician falls in love with an actor but discovers that the only way to her heart is through her ego.

2. “Dead to the World” – a pair of film directors burn so many bridges that one of them ends up unable to get any work other than directing porn with actors and crew whose egos far exceed their talents.

3. “Atlanta” – a man abandons a promising relationship, ostensibly because he’s homesick for Atlanta, but really because he’s afraid to commit.

4. “The American Dream” – a woman moves to a Midwest city to find love, but failing this, she ends up in a loveless marriage just so she can avoid living alone.

5. “The Blacksmith Shop” – during Jazzfest, a pianist partying at the oldest bar in North America is asked, out of the blue, to sit in for the legendary Johnny Gordon.

6. “Hill Country Rain” – a story about the epic flash floods along the Lower Guadalupe River and the people that continue to rebuild in the flood plain despite the danger.

7. “Jennifer” – a man is afraid to tell a woman how he feels, for fear of losing her as a friend.

8. “One-Way Line” – a musician ponders the breakup of his marriage as he rides the SkyTrain into Vancouver.

Personnel:

D. R. Commander – keys
Dr. Graeme Francis – drums on “Atlanta” and “Hill Country Rain”
Aaron Goldfarb – guitars
G. Pat Harris – upright and/or electric bass

Release Date:

In the words of the late Douglas Adams, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”  Every time I try to set a release date on this album, it serves only to prove my complete ignorance of the production process.  However, as I write this, 6 of the 8 songs are (more or less) ready for vocals and then final mix, so I should be able to post some pre-mix tracks on Facebook and MySpace soon.