Yes and No was my first real attempt at putting my solo material together into a collection. At this time, I was becoming more serious about my bass playing, and less serious about my drumming. As a result, the bass work is pretty good (in my own estimation) but there are no live drums on the album (they’re all programmed).

All the songs were written and recorded between June 2001 and January 2002, and represent a point in my life experience quite a bit of change. “Yes and No”, “Leaving Louise”, and “No One” are songs about confusion and aggravation. “Calling Out to You” was written for Noor, whom at the time I lost touch with. “Passing My Way Again” is a song about meeting up again with an old friend.

As I was listening to a lot of Grateful Dead during this period, “The Blind Man”, “On Steven’s Pass”, “The South of Lexietown Blues” and “For What It’s Worth” are reminiscent. I actually did a solo jam in “The Blind Man”, where I laid down a few minutes of drums without any real structure, and simply just jammed along.

Recording

I wrote, recorded, programmed, mixed, and engineered each of these songs. For drum recording and other special programmed effects, I turned to the drum machine in my Korg D-16. Direct audio was recorded using Cakewalk Pro Audio and brought into my PC using my Eurorack MX 602A.