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Anyone's Son Will Do: CDMost of this album was recorded live in an old traditional style with all the musicians sitting around together in one room playing at the same time. It isn’t perfect like you get when you can do 50 overdubs but to me there is a wonderful creative energy captured in the recordings. All the songs on this CD are very personal. Each one is influenced by people, places and experiences at particular times in my journey.Anyone's Son Will Do: SongAnyone's Son Will Do for example has beginnings when I was a teenager during the Vietnam War working at Yokota Air force Base. My mom was a Red Cross volunteer and got me talking and playing guitar to the severely wounded soldiers in the hospital. I played them songs and they told me their experiences. I began to understand that the real life of a soldier was not something glamorous and exciting as I’d been lead to believe. I saw horrible wounds and heard chilling stories of how they found themselves killing men, women and even children. Meanwhile it seemed the pilots and generals were strutting around the base like heroes untouched by the human cost.Later in life I did the music for one episode of the TV documentary series "War". It has a chilling episode filmed completely at a Marine boot camp documenting how ordinary teenagers must be turned into killers that will kill on command. Watching the movie "Blackhawk Down" reminded me of American soldiers and children soldiers I'd run into in Chad while doing a film there. I got word later that these soldiers ages 13 to 15 were killed in an ambush by the government. They were the same ages as my two boys at the time. "Anyone's Son Will Do" is dedicated to all the grunt soldiers in the world and those that love them. I was fortunate to have my good friend Steve Walker, an excellent musician, help me work out some of the chord changes one week when he was out in Seattle. In performance I have been surprised how this song cuts through politics. Conservative Christians, Republicans, Anarchists and Liberals (at different times, not necessarily in the same concert) have talked to me afterwards about how it speaks to them.
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