This is more of a guitar album than the last few. I've been putting the kids to bed with a half-hour of playing every night, then another half-hour just for fun. My lovely Martin M-36 has been joined by a sweet mahogany little sister, the Martin 000-15S. And just recently a gorgeous, voluptuous, and curvaceous new Epiphone Zephyr Regent electric archtop came to stay. My warm sunburst Fender Jazz Bass couldn't be left out, so it's here, too--albeit modestly and sparingly. (Almost forgot: Leonard Coulson-made Whyte Laydie 5-string banjo, old-time frailing, of course.) In keeping with the concept wrapped up in the title, this is a pretty acoustic, one-man sort of expression. Sometimes an artist will stretch their head around some new musical vocabulary or lyrical idiom. No stretching here--this is what my neighbors hear wafting off the front porch. Stuff I like to play just because it feels good.

This project was conceived in the friendship and kind hopes of some folks who've been asking, ever since I became cyber-available, for something like this. John and Amy Johnson were instrumental (although John could have been vocal, as well--he does a terrific Elvis) in arranging for hospital and delivery bills to be covered. Final midwifery by David Coppins.

This is one of three songs here that have been released previously (but each remixed). I wouldn't play that trick except the songs really fit, and have probably been waiting for this CD to be their real home. This one I wrote for the sesquicentennial celebration of the establishment of my little town that I love. The C. F. Martin Guitar Company was established earlier, but not by much.

I've always loved this folk song, even borrowed the tune for a wedding song for my son, Joe. But the first verse always sounded to me like the beautiful ending to a happy love story, instead of a misleading beginning to a sad break-up story. So hey, being a folk, myself, I wrote two new verses to make it be what I always wanted it to be.

I wrote this for the wedding of my daughter, Eliza Wren, to the excellent Irishman Gavin McDermott.

This old hymn is here because it has an astounding lyric by W.W. Phelps, but mostly because the tune is "Kingsfold," which I love.

This ought to be a folk song, because it sounds more like one than most real folk songs do. (It was written in 1963 by John D. Loudermilk, Lester L. Brown, Bob Gibson, and Albert Stanton.) It's just really fun to play, and as I was considering adding it to my set for a New Year's Eve gig in St. George, Utah, in 2002, the lyric to the chorus and first verse, which were all the words I knew, started resonating for me on a doctrinal level (this resonance would have been, I think, a great surprise to Brothers Loudermilk, et al.), because they're about wanting to get to a city where nobody treats you mean and stuff is free. I wrote a couple more verses to fill in the blanks and played it that night.

When this Swedish hymn (by Caroline V. Sandell-Berg, 1832-1903) showed up in the Mormon Hymnbook in 1985, I found it and loved it and immediately started singing it. Like the other hymns here, it's pretty much just one acoustic guitar and me singing.

On the subject of children, here's a song about where they come from. If I have the genealogy straight, this song is a folk rhyme set to music by Rocky Mountain folk singer Rosalie Sorrells.

I wrote this for a big choral project that Steven Kapp Perry and I produced about the Family Proclamation. Kind of central to the idea of families is the process of getting children into them.

Okay, then a song about an actual baby, my daughter Adwen, who, on the day this CD is released, will be celebrating the beginning of her eighth week of earth life.

Another baby, this one eight and accountable. One of those "Hey, weren't you just born a little bit ago?" songs. This one, for sure, gets played nightly alongside the bunkbed.

A guitar dance with words. My five-year old John liked it, so it became his. He and I gather rock "treasures" down in the creek bed.

Just me and one of the guitars, like on the front porch.

A patriotic piece. I wrote this for the eagle court of honor of a good friend's son. The son and his kind are in the last verse. When I was a kid, I learned to pledge allegiance to the flag. This song, recently released, is about pledging allegiance to rocks, wind, rivers, heroes, and the Maker of the land.

A nineteenth-century hymn from Robert Lowry and Ira D. Sankey, this brought tears the first time I heard it sung by Martha Glissmeyer, an actress I'd known for a long time and worked with happily. This piece is the closest I come to having an actual "thesis song" for this album.

This song of mine was the "amen" expression on my previous album. Being a guitar and a voice and everything this album is about, I'm bringing it back. I play it a lot, always at the end of things.