'Fall In Love Too Easy' came to be in the summer of 1979. The location of this birth, such as it is, was Malibu, California - Point Dume to be exact: a stones throw from Dylan's place. My wife of five years was in England for the summer, and had left me sole occupant of our tiny 210 square foot cottage. We were taking a breather, and beginning to realize that maybe our life together was shifting, and were both headed in different directions. There was a brief and ill-fated rendezvous with the fiery actress Betty Buckley. After spending a couple of interesting but perplexing hours with her up in Big Sur - with sparks of the good and not-so-good kind flying every which way - I went into full retreat mode and high-tailed it back to Malibu. But I carried with me enough inspiration for two songs in my saddlebags; 'Fall In Love Too Easy' being one.

I performed the song quite a bit back in that timeframe, but it eventually slipped out of my repertoire. However it was recorded in a live concert at McCabes Guitar Shop with the Santa Monica Bay Band ensemble in 1979. I had always been moved by our performance, and held fast to that live recording. Somehow or other the song never found it's way onto any of my studio albums. Fast forward to 2009. As the hunt for songs for the 'Deep Water' record began I found in storage an ancient cardboard box full of cassettes of AT music dating all the way back to the early seventies. As I'd never bothered to install a CD player in my old Dodge van, and since it still had a working cassette player, I decided to play a tape or two a day from the box as I was driving to and from surfing, windsurfing, gigging, what have you. In this manner I rediscovered five songs I thought might sound cool recorded now. A few lines needed a slight rewrite on 'Fall In Love...' to reflect more of what I'm feeling now some thirty years later, and because I tend to turn a phrase a little differently at this stage of the game. Funny thing is that the sentiment of the song rings as true for me now as it did then some thirty-two years past. I guess it's true that some people just never learn!

The Recording: It was tough in a way because it wasn't like recording a new song that had no past. This one reached back into the late seventies, and I had become attached to the parts and riffs the players had left on the live recording. So though I had to start fresh, those older parts had become part of the DNA of the song, and now all that was to change. However my one link to the past with this song was Bryan Kessler, who had played guitar on that very live concert recording, and would most certainly be joining this recording endeavor.

After spending a couple of days searching my Spectrasonics RMX sound library for some temporary stereo drum loops that would fit the groove of the song, I settled on some Danny Gottlieb brushes, and dropped them into the session. I then proceeded to record an acoustic guitar track, using a Sanken CU-44X mic into my Brent Averill Neve mic pre. The Sanken has a midsize capsule which works great for capturing the mid-rangy Collings, which is a cutaway. This guitar part was followed by my lead vocals. Working all alone up in my recording laboratory I'd normally record around two hours worth of takes, changing the phrasing a little on each successive take and experimenting as I went. Later I'd come back in and spend several days to a week editing: picking the right takes and phrases and blending them into one keeper track.

It was an eye-opening experience to be a fly on the wall when Donald Fagen was comping his vocals with recording engineer TJ Doherty on the 'Morph The Cat' record. I not only had one of the times of my life, but learned a lot, and was using that knowledge now to hone my own vocal tracks down to the essence of only that which works. Back before home studios and Pro Tools software it was always big fun to record a "keeper" lead vocal on a song after the whole band had laid their tracks down together in a real bona fide recording studio - and sometimes singing your vocal while the band was recording the track, and hoping for a keeper. But now finds us at the beginning of the second decade of the new century, and for financial and geographic reasons I was at home layering tracks one at a time, and having to lay my vocal down to just a raw electric or acoustic guitar part, and still try to make it believable and compelling enough to inspire all the other players who would follow. So it took a bit of work, which I don't mind at all, but the results with the vocals were such that even after all the other instruments were on the song, I found no reason to redo them, and that was the case with this old chestnut.

After my parts were recorded I was anxious to see what Bryan Kessler would come up with on electric guitar, having accompanied me on this very song over three decades ago. He flew in from Oahu for the occasion, and deployed my Sadowsky Tele Standard and Carr tube amp for the job. As usual we went at it deep into the night fueled by caffeine and natures own, taking as many takes as we damn well pleased, and stopping to work on a section if it needed going over, or just recording full takes and letting Bryan play his heart out. He brought back a couple of licks that I'd grown accustomed to from the old arrangement, and devised plenty of new ones as well, aways with taste and soul. The new arrangement had now begun. Again, you could count it taking at least a week to review all Bryan's cool takes, and hand pick only the gems for the final BK track(s). But there ended up being an overage of tasty gems, and they all needed to see the light of day as far as I was concerned, so I created a second Bryan electric guitar track, dropped them into place, panned them left and right and wound up using both tracks to a highly satisfying degree. Such an element of surprise takes place when recording like this, and you never know what it's going to sound like until that final stroke of the brush.

Keyboard adept Michael Ruff was called upon next for his unique gift of knowing how to add new depth and color to an ever-changing canvass. I couldn't wait for him to get his fingers on this song, even though I still loved Pete Wasner's original Fender Rhodes part from the live at McCabes show. Knowing it would be futile to ask Ruff to duplicate Pete's original parts, I just let go and let Mike do his thang. He did mention that as usual there was no bass part for him to lock into on my tracks, but as it never seemed to bother any of the previous songs we recorded this way before, he shrugged it off and dug in. Didn't take long for Ruff to find his way and begin spinning his web of magic over the tune. Two hours later I was at home, listening to all the bountiful tracks Mike had brought to bear, and choosing only that which fit like a glove. Tell you this, his uncanny knack for inventing cool melodic and rhythmic parts made it oh so easy to find the gold. Bass would be definitely needed next to tie the track together, and I had a real good idea who to ask without me even having to leave the state of Hawaii to record him.

I'd met the exceptional and funky bassist James "Hutch" Hutchinson on Maui in 2008. We decided right then and there one day we'd work together on something - a gig, or maybe a session. It came together for us in the winter of 2010, when I flew there to record bass on three songs with him at the illustrious Dave Russell's Paia Town Recording Studio. On this track Hutch played a couple of killer takes on his Fender Precision bass, but also provided a couple of smooth passes with his Washburn AB 40 acoustic fretless bass - which is the same type instrument he used on the soul-stirring Bonnie Raitt song 'I Can't Make You Love Me'. After a fun and supper productive session I flew directly back to Kauai, chomping at the bit to drop his bass into the songs and see what we had. Back at Black Bamboo Studios I wound up using mainly his P bass parts, with a couple of guest notes from the Washburn, especially at the very end. Such a gift to have my songs played by such masterful cats as Hutch, and the rest of this gang. It never ceases to amaze me how in choosing the right players it all comes together better even than you dreamed; like the many pieces of a complex puzzle falling into place one right after the other - and that goes for the photographer, graphic artist, mixer… right down the line.

All of a sudden its summer 2011, and 'Fall In Love Too Easy' is finally ready for real drums to enter the picture and put the finishing touches to the painting. There were four songs remaining which needed drums, and with a lot of luck and Miss Serendipity herself riding on my shoulders it came together for Yellowjackets drummer William Kennedy to play on all four. Being a long-time Yellowjackets fan I was over-the-top at having Will play on these tracks, especially this one, and I just knew he would take the songs arrangement to it's final destination with soul, inventiveness, and grace. He did so, to the max. I wasn't be there for the actual Los Angeles session, but with someone like Will K on the job, I didn't need to be there. I'd sent William rough mixes of the tunes with the drum loops I'd created so he could get an idea of where I was coming from. But after that he was on his own, and that was fine with me, because he really didn't need me telling him what to play. Giant thanks to Paul Tavenner at Big City Recording Studio for his excellent job or recording Mr. Kennedy's drums.

After William's drums I reviewed the painting. Nothing else was needed, not one thing. And though it was a new perspective on an old idea, I believe to my soul it surpassed its previous incarnation, and now was ready for the Doctor and his assistant to be brought to its very final conclusion…