(shannon) Hi y'all!!! It's been a long haul, mostly by the sweat of George's brow, but he cajoled our old record company, RCA/BMG, into reissuing the Reel Life cd and the never released stateside New Dream cd. They are NOW AVAILABLE here on our website, at the discography page. Check 'em out~ we are thrilled to have our long lost, wandering in the desert of no earplay albums returned to us at last!! New Dream is complete with booklet, and we hope to provide the Reel Life lyrics for viewing someday on the discography page. You'll click on the song titles and up will come the lyrics, same as The Wonderground lyrics are right now.

So...hmmm. Thoughts abound when remembering that music, so we'll try to recapture a few of those moments for you over the next few weeks. What I am thinking about now is Reel Life, and the wonderful gentleman who was our A&R man at RCA/BMG, the late Paul Atkinson. A few kudos are due him here. He was a rare breed~ you don't find many like him. Starting out in music as the bass player for The Zombies (Time of The Season, She's Not There (unique, classic sixties pop songs), he was blessed with a truly musical heart and soul, which he generously applied to the task of helping to guide the musical developement of bands with whom he was working. When we first signed with RCA Paul encouraged us to keep writing even when we thought we were ready to record, pushing us to write more and better, resulting in the song Waiting For A Star To Fall. He helped us make the final song selection for Reel Life, and was also responsible for hooking us up with the delightful and venerable Arif Mardin, our producer on the Reel Life CD. I recall fine dinners of excellent food and much mirth in the company of Paul and his wife Helen...sadly, Paul was escorted out of this world after a courageous battle with kidney disease and cancer, even playing at his own tribute at the House of Blues this spring, a month before he died. It may be unusual to feel love and respect for your A&R man, but that is how we felt about him, as did many others, and it is what he himself generated.

Arif Mardin is a man of equally fine stature who taught us not only some of the finer arts of arranging, but how to be patient and relaxed in the studio. What? Relax in the studio? It was difficult in those days to feel you could relax with the clock running on some very expensive studio time, and yet he sat there seeming to be absorbed with a crossword puzzle (which he always completed), when he really was listening intently to the music. He simply found it best to concentrate while part of his mind was at play, avoiding the aural burnout of constant repitition as tracks were recorded. Smart man. So there he was on the couch behind the console, directing and suggesting as players played and singers sang. We had our favorite players in for various songs, matching their particular skills up with the songs. We'll try to include specific details as they occur to us. I am recalling background vocal sessions with George, me and Susan Boyd-she of the power voice! We sang many layers of stacked vocals, switching harmony parts for the various tracks to make ourselves sound as BIG as possible. Those were the eighties after all, when everything was big. Everything! Hair, choruses, ideas, dreams, super freeways, corporate paychecks, houses, restaurant chains and food portions, all outlandishly huge. Susan is a FUNNY girl with a quick wit, and we had many a laugh whenever she joined us. There were times we couldn't even look at each for fear we'd break out in some serious fits of the giggles.

Our video for Waiting For a Star To Fall, shot over the course of a few days, was filmed in part at the Stevenson Ranch up near Valencia, California. It was great fun to see the camera and sound people at work, and the Australian director, Claudia Castle, staying one step ahead of everybody. The beach scenes were done at Westward beach in Malibu, catching the golden "magic hour" glow just before sunset, after which we had to scramble up the steep cliff with all the gear because the tide had come in, blocking our route around the rocks; our daughter and her friends, who were preschoolers at the time, were the kids chasing bubbles in the park as the video opens. What I like the most about the song itself is the instrumental opening~ it seems to hold the promise of something wonderful about to happen, like you're holding your breath expectantly, looking around so as not to miss it, waiting for a special delivery of your heart's desire. I think the video is a warm reflection of that hopeful feeling.

The video for Bring Down The Moon was directed by Alex Proyas who has since directed The Crow and I Robot, among his feature films. How cool!!!! Many of you have never seen this video since it didn't receive much airplay, and we do not have copies to share with you, but it was particularly fun traipsing around New Mexico and Arizona with Alex and his crew as the New Mexico skies split open in torrents of rain, thunder and lightning. We drove through the desert to California in a van, jumping out to film whenever Alex saw an interesting setting, which turned out to be an old graveyard, a vintage gas station that also happened to sell delicious homemade tamales, a date palm orchard one night, an old cowboy town another night; George and I were even set upon a spinning disc in a small studio for a couple of hours of filming, requiring a few hours of recovery from the nausea. I don't know how dancers tolerate it! One of the most awesome sights, which did not make it onto our video, was the "very large array" in the New Mexican desert (seen in the Jodie Foster/Matt McConaughey movie Contact), a massive gathering of behemoth satellite dishes silently, majestically, patiently listening for signals from outer space. Just think of it! As we stood by the side of the road in near reverance, taking in the import of this dream of mankind, we were all captivated by the romance of the desire for connection to our universe. Alex's black and white vision for the video perfectly suited the introspective tone of the song, one of hard won understanding of the realities of committed love, and a regretful letting go of the unattainble ideal of perfection. I love to see that Alex has gone on to be a successful film director~ George and I have both always felt he had "that thing" going on.  

We will keep adding to this memory bank for those of you interested in returning to this journal page. Thanks for checking in.

Our challenge is to generate peace in our hearts even while the world is in tumult.

Love to you all, Shannon