Nico, if you're reading this when you're way older, I want you to know that you knew pretty early on that every song is ultimately a love song. We discussed it last year, I think. When you were six. Or maybe you had just turned seven. And you said it with such certainty. We were trying to decipher the meaning of a new indie folkie thing on WFUV, when I looking in the rear view mirror and announced that I thought the whole thing may have been about love. And that's when you said it. This album I released in 2009, The Big Beauty - one of my longest and biggest soundest, perhaps - is a collection of urges towards that idea.

It's a whopper of an album and a genuine attempt at making a consistent sound, maybe the most concerted effort in that direction of my career. Sure, the songs can get quirky and strange at times (a calling card at this point, the veering into offbeat or eclectic choices), but the sound of the album is really an homage to all the Americana alternative folk and rock I was listening to at the time...the Wilco and the Black Crowes and the Jayhawks and those kinds of bands. I know there is a range we're talking about here (and I probably fell toward the more "art rock" Americana over the "roots rock" Americana), but I think The Big Beauty delivers a hue and a certain kind of shine, and it's all in its architecture.

Once again, I turned to Michael (Bloom) for direction. I had this suitcase of songs that I was playing out and with a killer band of thoughtful musicians and people. Lots of cool gigs at spots like the Living Room in the city and rooms like that outside of it. I don't exactly remember the details of how it happened but somehow the compass pointed to tracking the album live and then doing overdubs and mixing and mastering later. And where would that happen? Mike knew a gent named Matt Cullen who worked at a huge studio in upstate New York as well as its little sibling The Clubhouse. He had worked with all kinds of great bands that were in the vein of what The Big Beauty might resemble. One of them was My Morning Jacket, I think. Not sure. But it was enough for me to pull the trigger and get the money together and rehearse the beauties at Euphoria in Manhatta for a while and get us ready for a long weekend of laying it all down. Some of the songs were ones I'd been playing and had already recorded and most were new, but the whole idea of of it started sounding plausible very real to me after a performance on WFUV, I think. Full band rock around a vision or concept versus the hodgepodge put together catalog thing I made last time. It could happen.

That weekend was blissful. We had massive amounts of Indian food for dinner in the thick of it, stayed at one of Matt's friend's houses, and just bonded around the tunes. My friends were the fabric of this thing, which meant I was not alone in the world of making something. As an only child, this was and still is huge to me. How grateful I am for their talent and heart. Additional tracking with the always wonderful Phil Jimenez back in Huntington making the ancillary vibes and genius Brian Blackburn (ribbon mics!) in Los Angeles, of course, and Mike finished up everything else and ultimately saw it through to the end. I'm indebted.

The album art was Haik Kocharian, which was snapped during one of the best shoots I've ever had. Two friends/artists stumbling about the East Village finding little gateways to vibes. The one we rested on was shot in the Beauty Bar on 14th street. Something about the big face and dressing up in front of it. So flashy and celebrity but so domestic and provincial too. Like my dream is somewhere up there but I'm unmistakably right here in the very bar of it too. I love that original photo from which this design came together, Keith Gladysz-style. I mean the Urartan (pre-Armenia) symbols framing the image was my idea, but he puts everything together with a real shine and attention to weird mood. I love it. It's one thing to be friends for a long time, and it's another to have a friend's work be with you for a long time. I hope this archive here on Bandcamp does to some people what Keith's art does to me often...has done over a lifetime.

In terms of the title, Timmy used to deliver it best, but my first acquaintance at Ithaca College in 1991 was the first one who introduced to me to the potency of the phrase spun together with an exaggerated Bronx or multi-borough (sandwich style) put on. "The big beauty." That's a "bee-uuu-teee right there," Brian Shofi would say en route to our undergraduate daze. At a gorgeous car or sunset or foliage or anything really. An idea. Hardly ever about a person, but that was there too.

It stuck. Massively.