Leaving New York Sessions
Brooklyn, NY
21 May 2024
June 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of my 1st record, Windfall (https://thereflectors.bandcamp.com/album/windfall). With that album, I came into my own as a full-fledged songwriter, and fulfilled a lifelong dream to arrange and orchestrate my music into a sum greater than its parts. On the other hand, all the master tracks disappeared into the ether before I was done, and before I could lay bass tracks. I know, I know, I know the bass should’ve been laid second. Whatever. I did manage to insert some bass into a few tracks about ten years ago on the bandcamp release. The version on Spotify and Apple Music, however, remain frozen in time.
I wrote the track Windfall in 2004. The bulk of the melody and chorus came together in about 20 minutes one night in May. I still recall the flow and ease with which it materialized. My wife Catherine was up in our loft bed in the adjacent room of our old Manhattan 1-bedroom as I roughed out a demo, playing it in pieces and whole, maybe a few dozen times over a few hours, a process which always tests the patience of even the most patient listener. She called down in the midst of my session, “This is a great song. No one will ever tire of it.”
The effortlessness of the track’s creation, in a way, belies its theme of unrequited amibition. For sure, I’m still waiting on that windfall from all the secrets of the world I know. And also for sure, the last 20 years have pulled even more of those secrets into my orbit. Hi ho. “Someday” is a rough mantra, but hopelessness is worse than death. In that way, this track is a love letter to hope, so it is always pure uplift to play.
Windfall still stands as one of my most spun tracks, and I don’t go a single performance without playing it. For the longest time, it was also always the first song I would play folks who had never heard me play. I love it for how far around the world it continues to travel, and for how much love it sends back my way.
On a day in May almost 20 years to the day I wrote Windfall, I left my New York apartment of 17 years for good, and two days Iater I flew away from my home city of 30 years for good, it fit for Windfall to be the final song I played in that space. The flight footage in the video is of my flight out of JFK to PBI. Flying solo, I booked a window seat. I truly don’t know what’s next for me. Let’s hope it’s a windfall.
:^D
I was thinkin
wishful thinkin
of a good luck charm
of a world turned my way
I’m just waitin on that windfall
from the secrets of the world I know
I’m just waitin on that wind to fall
I close my eyes
drivin’ dusty roads
sending clouds
into a clear big sky
with every mile another dream
distant sunlit scenery
every mile another dream
these are your darkest days
cubicle post-it haze
feeling for a ledge for a leap of faith
I’m just waitin on that windfall
from the secrets of the world I know
I’m just waitin on that wind to fall