1. thinking about this (d. lathrop)

2. all shades of wrong (k. detweiler/g. pacheco)

3. everytime i fall (m. holland)

4. drunk girl (m. holland)

5. life in chains (k. detweiler)

6. without you duet with Alice Ripley (j. larson)

7. cool with me (k. detweiler/g. pacheco)

8. kevin's ghost (m. holland)

9. shine on (a. ripley)

10. feels so right (g. pacheco)

11. evaporated (b. folds)

12. when darkness falls (m.holland)
© 2005 Dancing Bull Music & randomwhiteboymusic
Executive Producer KIRK DETWEILER
Producer and Arranger JEFF WAXMAN
for DANCING BULL MUSIC
Producer and Vocal Coach LISA ASHER
Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at MANHATTAN BEACH
RECORDING STUDIO, New York, NY
Recording Engineer DAN HOPLER
Assistant Recording Engineer SHIN-WOOK KANG
Vocal Arrangements on "when darkness falls" BRYAN JOHNSON
The Random White Band:
Keyboards JEFF WAXMAN
Guitars PETER CALO
Bass LOUIS TUCCI
Drums & Percussion SHANNON FORD
Drums on "all shades of wrong," "life in chains" & "when darkness falls"
REX BENINCASA
Percussion on "all shades of wrong" & "every time i fall"
REX BENINCASA
Saxophone JACK BASHKOW
Back up Vocals
The Randomettes: LISA ASHER, LISA DESIMONE
The Randomaires: BRYAN JOHNSON, SEAN JENNESS,
MICHAEL MARRA, JEFF WAXMAN
Photography KRISTIN CALLAHAN
Design FRANK DAIN/BartArt Design

To purchase shades of wrong and to hear clips, go to
CDBaby.com
The Journey to shades of wrong

After releasing my debut CD, random white boy in 1999 (a compilation of mostly cover tunes), a few months later, I decided it was time to do something a little more original. In January 2000, I remember sitting in my producers’ (Jeff Waxman & Lisa Asher) new apartment on 101st & Broadway, when I discussed the possibility of a follow-up CD and asked Lisa if she knew any obscure song-writers, as I decided this time I would do all original or obscure tunes to cover as well as perhaps a couple tunes of my own, being the novice songwriter than I am..

Lisa leapt out of her chair and came back with singer/songwriter/musician/
producer Michael Holland’s first CD, Everybody’s a Jerk, which Michael recorded in 1993, proclaiming, "There’s a song on here that is perfect for you!" She proceeded to play Michael’s Drunk Girl and I immediately fell in love with this little song about a guy who can only get laid if the girl is really drunk. Not exactly "me" but, yeah, totally, I could see me singing this song. And shades of wrong was born.

shades of wrong was not always called shades of wrong. No indeed. A lyric from my new favorite song proclaimed a guy’s love for a "drunk and disorderly girl," so drunk and disorderly became the first working title for what was eventually became shades of wrong. Later that summer when I met my new idol, Michael Holland, he confided to me that he almost called his first CD, drunk and disorderly as well. My first idea was to pick songs that were all dealing with getting drunk, drinking, drowning one’s sorrow in drink, etc., but that didn’t last long. After discovering the music of Michael Holland, I quickly memorized all the songs from all his CD’s including Thank You for the Afghan and the then just-released Darkness Falls. I realized that I could record an entire album of Michael Holland songs, but eventually decided to keep it down to no more than four from any individual songwriter, so over the years, narrowed it down to only four songs by Michael.

Before deciding to call it shades, the CD went through various other working titles including Choose the Shoes, Hung Over and Old, Songs for the Dumped, Songs To Get Dumped By, silence doubt rejection rage, No Wind Chimes, Please!, Cataclysmic Death Spin, Sudden Silence and Glary Random Day (just because I love the word ‘random.’) In 2002, I worked with a girl named Jill Tasker from England, who said, with quite regularity, "Oh my God, that’s all shades of wrong!" and I thought, "What a great song title!" Later that year, I co-wrote a song called all shades of wrong with my friend, singer/songwriter, Galo Pacheco (more on that later) and suddenly shades of wrong had a title.

THE SONGS

thinking about this

Also in 2002, I worked with a band called "Adam’s Rib" from Toronto. They had just released a CD, Forever Café in Canada and had released a couple songs from it in Canada and had a regional hit with the opening track, thinking about this. I became friends with the band, especially the lead singer/guitar player/songwriter, Derek Lathrop. When I was looking for up-tempo rock songs, I fell in love with thinking about this and decided to include it on the CD. Originally, it was going to be track 6 on sow, but in the middle of our recording sessions, Jeff, my producer, thought it would be a great way to open the CD. We were thinking about doing a fake "live" version of it, adding background crowd sounds and cheers and applause. Initially, I was hesitant as I had my mind set on opening with Michael Holland’s when darkness falls with all its sound effects, plus the fact that "Adam’s Rib" opened their CD with it. To that, Jeff proclaimed (sorry Derek) "Who cares? Whoever’s heard of "Adam’s Rib?" so I thought, what the hey.

I love Derek’s version of it, and we are pretty faithful to it. Derek’s is a bit more hard-core rock, especially after Jeff added the synth parts, and Derek has this great, gritty, throaty rock voice as compared to my relatively wimpy young Wayne Newton-on-helium sound.

Everyone who has heard the song so far, comments on why the voice in the opening sequence gives me a "two minutes" call and the song actually starts playing two seconds later. That’s because we were already thinking about the video for this song, which would start backstage with me psyching myself up to going out on stage and "turn into the person that I think I should become." Then finally near the end, the voice (the fabulous Bryan Johnson) introduces the "Random White Band" to the stage in Ellington’s Night Club (which is the jazz club on the cruise ship Mariner of the Seas, by the way), and that’s when the song theoretically starts, at the end. Get it? Now quit asking me stupid questions!

all shades of wrong

Now you know where the title came from (see the Jill Tasker story above), but the song has a story of its own. Long story short and not to name names, years ago, I dated this dancer I worked with, who shall now only be referred to by the nickname, ‘Satan.’ Basically Satan dated me for a couple of months only to dump me to go back to her ex-boyfriend, later telling me that she only dated me to get back at her ex, and since I was the boss, to take advantage of my perks of being the boss: free room service and free drinks. If that isn’t all shades of wrong, I don’t know what is.

In 2002 (obviously a pivotal year for me!), I was lucky enough to work with a very talented singer/songwriter, Galo Pacheco. I had asked him to write an up tempo rock song for me and in 45 minutes he wrote the song feels so right and I loved it, so I asked him if he would like to collaborate on some songs with me. I was a bit of a novice and thought I had some good ideas and hooks but needed someone with real talent to take them to the next level. I told him the Satan story and came to him with the lyrics:

It’s all shades of wrong
Doin’ what you’re doin’
All shades of wrong
Screwin’ who your screwin’

Classic! Anyway, an hour later, we had half the lyrics and all the music to all shades of wrong done, eventually finishing it later that year when I visited Galo in LA. I would have to say Galo wrote about 75% of the music and I wrote 75% of the lyrics, so it was a true collaboration. Plus I had found myself a title tune in the process, not to mention getting Satan out of my system. Very cathartic.

every time i fall

For random white boy, I recorded a Christian song (Sandy Patty’s Another Time Another Place) with my sister, Karen Henry, who is an awesome singer. Ultimately, it got cut from the CD, because, although it is a great song, it ended up being even too random for me. So, I promised Karen that I would do a duet with her on my second CD. every time i fall, written by Michael Holland was chosen to be that duet. I was moved by its powerful lyrics:

Every time I fall in the dust
I swear to give my trust
And myself no more
And every time I land in the dirt
It seems if I’m not hurt
Then I just get bored.

Damn, I wish I wrote that song! Michael recorded it as a solo but with a dominating female harmony part, so I initially thought it would make a great duet, just split the verses between me and Karen and sing the chorus together with the great harmony Michael created. Then it dawned on me that the last thing this song was was a duet, or if it was going to be a duet, it had to be a duet with myself, which is what we finally ended up doing: a duet with me, but unfortunately my poor sister is once again ending up on the cutting room floor. Sorry, Karen, I swear, next time!

drunk girl

The first song I chose for the CD, was also the first song I decided NOT to record, and one of the last songs again chosen to be included.

When I decided that the theme of shades of wrong was not going to be alcoholism but rather a collection of "getting dumped" songs, I felt drunk girl didn’t exactly fit the profile anymore. In the final days of choosing songs, my long-time friend, Tracey Lemon, jokingly begged me to dedicate a song to her. At the same time, I realized that my CD was becoming ballad-heavy, so the decidedly non-ballady drunk girl was back in the line up. And yes, Tracey is famous for putting back a few! Gotta love British girls!

Another Michael Holland gem, Michael’s original version is very fun, harmony oriented and rather short, kind of a Beach Boys meet the Brady 6 (in the best possible sense, Micheal, it’s a compliment!) Right away, I told Jeff, "we have to ‘Green Day’ out on this song." I even told Michael I was doing a ‘Green Day’ version of it and he told me, "somebody needs to!"

Michael’s version of it is barely two minutes long and doesn’t repeat the chorus, so when Jeff and I were laying out the form, we added a guitar solo in the middle and repeated the "drunk girl" chorus. I liked the way we rocked out on it, but I fell in love with it when it came time to add the backup vocals. Sean Jenness, Bryan Johnson and Jeff do the backup vocals and the session was hysterical. Jeff had a general idea of how he wanted them to sound but Sean and Bryan added a lot of ideas and final product still cracks me up. "Drunk girl, drunk girl, really getting hammered!" and "drunk girl, drunk girl, falling on the floor now!" will definitely go down in the backup vocals hall of fame.

In April and May of 2005, we shot the video of drunk girl onboard the Mariner of the Seas. The extremely talented Tim Exner did a great job and the video stars Leigh Pugsley as "the drunk girl" along with Jesse Sebastian and Spencer Liff as my back-up singers. It was a total blast to make and Timmy did a great job. Thanks, Tim!.

life in chains

The only song on the CD that I totally wrote by myself is a song that had no title for 15 years.

Back in the ‘80s in college, my sophomore year, I was a transfer student at Kent State and I found out the fall musical was Grease. Having loved that show even before the movie, I knew there was a character who played the guitar, one of the Burger Palace Boys, "Doody." The summer before transferring I learned the basics of guitar and auditioned for the show singing the Beach Boy’s In My Room while playing guitar, and segueing into I Get Around. Yeah, I rocked. Anyway, I got the part, and to better my skills, took a guitar class at school (it’s called method acting: I was a 19-year old Robert DeNiro) and by the time the show debuted, I could fake my way through Those Magic Changes, the song the character plays guitar and sings in the first act. So for the next five years or so, I played guitar and wrote a bunch of worthless songs like Caught My Pants on Fire, Hey, Little Girl and Go To Hell in a Fast Car with lyrics like:

Hey little girl
You look so fine
Tell me you’ll be mine
You make me feel sublime
Although you’re only nine.

Senior year, I got into a vocal group with a bunch of friends ("Us Guys") that I worked with at a theme park (Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio) in the summer and we covered a lot of songs and started working on some original tunes before we graduated and disbanded. I wrote this song which I called Some Day for the group, however, I never got around to finishing the lyrics before graduation so it just sat in the back of my head. Fast forward to 2000, I remembered this tune, finished the lyrics, retitled it Life In Chains and boom, there is track #5. I wasn’t even sure it was any good until I played it for Suzie Hanson, who LOVED it, so I figured if is good enough for Suzie, I could put it on my CD. Thanks, Suzz!

without you

Back to senior year at Kent, this new transfer student from DePauw University caught my eye. Her name was Alice and she was the high school girlfriend of my college best friend, David Heckert.

Anyway, fast forward a few years and I am checking out the cast album of the newly opened Broadway hit, The Who’s Tommy and I notice that an Alice Ripley is listed in the cast and I wonder if it is the same Alice Ripley that I went to school with. Lo, and behold, it was.

A couple years later, Alice is starring opposite Glenn Close in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard and a bunch of us Golden Flashes all happen to meet in NYC and go see Alice in the show. After that, it was Christmas cards and an occasional lunch with Alice. Alice continued to be the toast of Broadway starring in shows like Rocky Horror Show, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and nabbing a Tony nomination for Side Show as one half of the Siamese twin act, the Hilton Sisters, with Emily Skinner.

When it came time to record sow, I found I lacked the duet that I had wanted to include previously. I had joked with Alice about doing a duet on my CD, and thought I would ask one more time, just for kicks, plus it wouldn’t hurt to her be associated with it (I use all my friends!) I was already recording one of her songs, shine on, so I asked her and she said sure! I chose a song I loved and had performed in my second cabaret show with Lisa Asher, without you, from the musical Rent. It’s a very simple, repetitive song, but ever since I became addicted to the music from the show when the original cast album first came out, I had especially loved the haunting without you.

Alice wasn’t available to come to the studio while I was in town, so we recorded our vocals a week apart. That’s my one regret, that we didn’t get to record it together. Alice rocks and sings the s**t out it, I’m just glad to share the airwaves with her. without you was actually the last song chosen and recorded for the project.

cool with me

cool with me was actually 95% written by me. I had written this medium tempo song about the frustration of being in a one-sided relationship. I presented it to Galo Pacheco to make a demo and he sped it up, added the hand-jive groove that it ended up having and changed a couple chord progressions. His version sounded frighteningly like George Michael’s Faith, so when it came time to record it, I urged Jeff to get away from that and he made it much more percussive and added Jack Bashkow’s fabulous sax parts, so now it doesn’t resemble Faith all that much anymore.

I got the idea for cool with me from a conversation I had with my friend, Zack Grey, in 1995. We were lamenting over lost loves and he told me: "the one with the control is the one who cares the least." I always remember that because I immediately thought "THAT is a song!" Paraphrasing what Zack said opens the song:

They say the one who cares the least
Is the one with the control
Come on, baby, put my mind at ease
In my heart you left a hole

That is truth! I know!

My favorite line in that song is the one very few people get:

Honey, you got hand, so I use mine

The "you got hand" concept is right out of an episode of "Seinfeld" when George is lamenting to Jerry that his current girlfriend has "hand", i.e. the upper hand in the relationship. "Honey, you got hand, so I use mine." Well I guess you can figure out the second half of the line! I love that lyric and it kills me that I wrote it. This song went through so many re-writes, I didn’t even decide on the final lyrics until the day we actually recorded the final vocals. But now, it’s frozen. And exactly three minutes long.

kevin’s ghost

Another song that almost didn’t get recorded.

Michael Holland’s third contribution to shades of wrong. Michael told me the story of kevin’s ghost. Michael had lived for a time in Boston and had a good friend, Stephen, whose lover had recently died of AIDS. He wrote kevin’s ghost for his friend, Stephen.

This song hit home for me too. In 1992, I worked with and became really good friends with a guy from Houston named Kyle Dodson. His twin brother, Kevin, had recently died at age 29. When I heard kevin’s ghost, it immediately meant something to me and I wanted to record it for Kyle, plus that fact that it is an amazing, haunting song. I even asked Michael to rewrite it for me so it could take place in Texas or New York instead of Boston. He said no. I then asked if I could at least change a name in the song, from "Stephen" to "Kyle." He told me that normally he wouldn’t mind, but that particular song meant too much to him personally and he couldn’t allow me to change even the one word, which I totally respected. So Stephen stayed, but the song is for Kyle.

shine on

Alice Ripley had recorded numerous original cast albums and two CDs of duets with her Side Show sister, Emily Skinner, by the time her first pop album of her original songs, Everything’s Fine was released in 2000. Of course, I was the first one to buy it being one of her 200 fans. She joked with me once that she had "200 fans," 200 people who go to her every show, wait for her by the stage door, and buy every album she records. (I think I have about 12.) Everything’s Fine shows off Alice’s talent as a songwriter and guitarist. Two songs on it really caught my ear, a piano/cello ballad called Drive and the country-twinged Shine On.

My version of shine on I wanted to feel like Bette Midler’s version of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Shuffle from her Divine Madness soundtrack. Low and lazy: something you would put on the turntable on a hot, sweaty night in July. Peter Calo’s twangy guitar and Jeff Waxman’s organ succeeded in making it just that: low and lazy, just how I had envisioned it. My form is a bit different from the original’s. Alice sang two verses and had a bridge, which repeated the phrase "feed the flame" over and over, but I really wanted to repeat the progression, which was my favorite part:

But ever since the day you went away
I’ve been thinking about not hiding

Also, Alice only repeats the chorus once at the end, but Jeff and I decided we should repeat it over and over, getting more anthematic with each round, eventually ending with Lisa Asher wailing a counter melody before fading it out.

feels so right

feels so right holds the distinction of many firsts for my CD. It was the first song written specifically for the project, the first song in which the track, the final vocals and the backups were recorded, and the first time anyone had ever written a song specifically for me to sing. And it was all written in 45 minutes.

My friend and songwriting partner, Galo Pacheco (shades of wrong, cool with me) wrote this song after I had told him I wanted some original, up tempo rock songs for my new CD, so a couple days later, he comes over to my room and plays me a song he called it feels so right. I dropped the "It" just because that’s my thing. I don’t think he ever noticed. Don’t tell him. Please, I beg you.

evaporated

evaporated was yet another song, which was one of the first songs I considered for the CD, then one of the first ones cast away, only to be chosen again in the final cut.

In the summer of 2000, I went to visit my sister, Kris, then a graduate student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. I was heavy into looking into songs to record and asked her what she was listening to and what the other college kids were listening to. The first CD she pulled out was Ben Folds Five’s 1997 CD, whatever and ever amen and I loved it from the beginning. BFF, I always described as a jazz grunge trio. evaporated was the last song on the CD and it grabbed me because it totally fit the new theme of my burgeoning CD: songs for the dumped. Actually, there is a song on that CD called song for the dumped which is totally perfect and hilarious and I considered recording it, but it says the "f word" too many times for me to sell on a ship. My boss would never have approved it, although I will perform that song live one day, before I die.

I love Ben Folds, because he sings in my key and his songs are so simple, yet so intelligent. What sold me over were the lyrics:

And I poured my heart out
I poured my heart out
It evaporated.


My version differs from the original in that the original never repeats the bridge, and I thought that was a much more powerful ending than the verse.

For awhile, although evaporated was one of the first songs chosen for the CD, I instead chose to record Alice Ripley’s drive instead, but then realized it really didn’t fit my voice or limited vocal range, so drive was out and evaporated was back in.


when darkness falls

Alanis Morrissette should have written this song. Nuff said. The ultimate ‘eff you’ song.

I call this song my "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Michael Holland’s title track from his third CD was the song that gave shades of wrong its theme. As soon as I heard it, I knew I had to record it. The ultimate dark ‘you done me wrong’ song. I feel very fortunate to have gotten to know Michael so I could get the background of his songs. Michael wrote this song about his ex who had a tendency to cheat on him. Michael’s version is all guitars, no other voice but his own with major effect on it. He uses percussion sparingly and it is total electronica. I love his version but of course wanted to do a totally different version of it. So we took a more traditional hard rock power ballad approach to it, but decided it needed more. At the end of Michael’s version, you faintly hear a rainstorm and a siren before it melds into an old Victrola recording of some ancient song fading into white noise. We decided to segue from evaporated into when darkness falls, connecting the two with weather. Wind fades in as evaporated ends and darkness starts and ends with a full-on thunderstorm with police sirens thrown in for good measure. The word I used to Jeff when describing what I wanted was cacophony. I wanted A LOT going on. Bryan Johnson was given the task of creating the background vocals (Michael had none) and created this Satan-speak devil-on-the-shoulder kind of other-voice that I think is totally cool. My college friend, Mike Marra, adds the baritone to Bryan’s tenor.

Although Michael’s version of darkness runs nearly five minutes, I felt it was too short. I really wanted to have a guitar instrumental and add a bridge. I asked Michael to write a third verse and he initially told me no, stating that "that song came to the party, said what it had to say and left," but eventually he relented, but then got too busy and never did (damn him) so I ended up repeating the first verse.

After recording the song, suddenly the guitar solo felt very empty especially after the apocalyptic ending. I thought back to random white boy, when I recorded a hip/strange little version of Paul Simon’s the sound of silence when my backup singer, Karen Mack, said the very Catholic ‘‘act of contrition’’ under the third verse in a very inspired moment. Being a Protestant, I had my graphic designer, Frank Dain, search the Internet for the full ‘‘act of contrition’’ and that is what I am whispering during the guitar solo. The last 90 seconds of the song, I just wanted noise and textures and levels. Cacophony! Ending with the splendid Lisa Asher as the 911 operator, melting back into the thunderstorm...........