I was able to acquire this album from Warner Bros. Records for my own label OMAC Records, so now it joins the family of releases! And this is a real highlight of my contemporary fusion period of the time, with guests artists featured; the iconic James Taylor on one of my most beloved tracks, "Ol' Blue"; and the saxophone legend Michael Brecker on the uplifting "Get, Set Go" and the fireworks of "We're Surrounded."

The album session band was simply amazing. Working on the remastering of this album with Dave Harris at Studio B brought back the memories of the original session vividly. The studio band played live in the studio and what incredible mastery of session playing from the period; Eddie Bayers on drums, Michael Rhodes on bass, Tom Roady on percussion, John Jarvis, Matt Rollings and Mike Lawler all on keyboards. I played all the violin, and overdubbed some background Fender Stratocaster parts throughout. A couple of pieces had some lush strings arranged by Edgar Meyer.

My co-producers were also beautiful to work with, Paul Worley (a hit maker), and the recording and mixing engineer Ed Seay who created a masterclass of contemporary fusion recording of the 1980s.

There are several tunes from this record that made the difference for my career. The original version of "Bowtie" here led directly to the idea and creation of the TNN television show I directed, 'American Music Shop' for 4 years. "March of the Pharoahs" was a radio hit on many "WAVE" stations and Triple A stations around the country in the day, and the piece is featured in the O'Connor Method book series. "Hot Tamale" and "Pacific Expectations" both got a lot of additional airplay at the time. "Miniatures" is a duo featuring the incredible John Jarvis and it's the piece I've performed the most on stage over the years - having a gospel-like quality to this instrumental. BTW, it was the 2nd full take in the studio of this duet, (no fixes as we used to say). And my personal favorite tunes are "Changing of the Guard" where the musicians on the track just give me chills every time I listen to it, and "When We Talk" is the endearing ballad for the album.

A little bit about the writing process on this album. I wrote all of these tunes on a 6-hour flight in 1988 from the Berlin (where I played at the Jazz Festival) to New York with no instrument in hand - just out of my head. I was so pressed for time that year in '88, I was challenging myself to do something like that. I ran each of the tunes by Paul and Ed when I got back, and they suggested on an additional bridge on one of the tunes, and a rewrite of one of the choruses of another. And then we hit the studio. I was living and breathing music in my 20s around the clock and moving fast. This was easily the quickest album I ever created. Wrote it in a day, and recorded the tracks in 5 days with an additional days for James and for Michael. I probably spent 2 weeks on the violin overdubs to it just right for these recordings. Enjoy a brief moment of my musical development. And I can say this without a doubt. The success of this album and the nature of the recoding with studio musicians with me on the floor playing instrumental music, directly led to the making of the 'New Nashville Cats' the following year. And that of course was a real game changer album. And it'll be coming next on the OMAC Records series! ENJOY! Here is the link tree to all your favorite platforms. And download it too! The sound is amazing as you'll hear.