First I wanted to be a guitar player; Jimi Hendrix was on the wall above my bed, next to Jim Morrison. The funny thing is that my first record was Saturday Night Fever, and then I started listening to The Best of B.B. King. Years later, no matter what kind of music I played, people would say my voice is very soulful and bluesy, comparing me often to Van Morrison or Eric Clapton...Twenty-five years later, my computer knowledge is still basic, but thanks to Mac & Garage Band, I've managed to record this album all by myself. My other albums are also home-made in various home-studios, and this one turned out to be the most cost effective. Needless to tell the tale about the starving artist and so on...There's an interesting combination of songs here that I worked on in 2004 and 2005, and as I composed about 20, I have picked 12 and put them all together on the same album even though their genre vary. (Half of them are inspired by SUNSHINE--the other half is conceived before.) On two of them I played a bit with an electric guitar, but on most of them I played accoustic, and on some of them my friends ERIC NELSON (accordion) and DAVE DUFFIELD (cornet) gave totally different perspectives and enriched the sound with the colors one could only wish for.THE DIRT AROUND MY ROOTSYou're the dirt around my rootsyou're the one who makes me stayyou're the land beneath my kneewhen I kneel down and prayWhen my soul looks over those Broken HillsThen it wants to wander againYou're the dirt, you're my onlyroad I use to walk awayfrom the troubles that I makefrom the truth that's always fakeWhen my soul gets thirsty for your lovethen I stop and drink from your wellMy Mother EarthI was always told to be the one that gathers no moss, since I have been rolling like a stone for years. One day I was helping my dad, somewhere in N.E. Portland, digging the dirt around a tree we were going to uproot, and it hit me as I realized that around its roots were--the dirt. I was fascinated by it because in my language we'd say 'the land' around its roots, or 'the soil'--'the dirt' would mean something filthy. Wherever I was to plant my roots, every place had both 'good soil' and 'the dirt', but it was all a land, it was all the same old earth. Thus I wrote this song to glorify our Mother Earth as our one and only. At the same time I started writing a book that talks about the different lands/soils/dirts around my roots, whenever I stopped rolling to gather some moss.