In 1995, after having played drums in other people's bands, I decided I wanted more from my involvement in music. I wanted to be more expressive than I could be on drums, and freer to chase my muse and turn it into something more real than if I tried to join a band on another instrument. I began to formulate a plan--to record myself using any instrument that suited me, and develop my own sound, with some outside help at times to influence things beyond what I could do. I wanted to do this so I could return to a band situation eventually with some experience and ability to realize ideas better than humming a few bars...

The self-production continued from the summer of '95. Receiving was begun in earnest in the summer of '99, and the music was finished a year later. The art was another hurdle to overcome, and with that, the CD was finished yet another year later in October 2001.

Receiving started out as a collection of miscellaneous DATs and CDs and half recorded stuff that to me felt to be spontaneous. It spanned a few months or years. I was working on my silly project (a re-recording of my older, goofier stuff for a CD called ReCyclED) and along the way, a few jams and experimental recordings took place, that clearly didn't suit that project. By the summer of '99, I was recording things that were a bit more cohesive and that led to this CD. It seemed like it was time to gather things together, so I took stock of the recordings on hand.
Then something happened. I got a huge creative streak. I also got a new guitar and amp that summer, and Todd Larowe was making himself useful around the studio that year. It all began to make sense. I had a new project developing! Mike Keneally is the one to credit for it being named Receiving. I had told him about the creative streak and he wished me good luck and "keep on receiving"... It resonated with me. I never really had any other name for this project. With that theme to unify things, I continued to answer the call, spending ungodly hours in my studio recording things like mad. Mike Bedard also made things surge ahead, by playing drums in little bass/drums improv sessions-- a lot of which is his playing on the finished CD.

In the end, after many a sordid tale and overnight recording session, Receiving is really what I set out to do in 1995. It is the response to a call for me. It’s the fulfillment of a goal. It’s all that.