"Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from the Grinch" (Dec. 2007)

It's funny that the Grinch is actually one of my most favorite things about Christmas. As a kid, the Grinch and the Peanuts gang were my absolute favorite Christmas cartoons. As an adult I realize that much of my delight in the misadventures of Charlie Brown seeking meaning in the crass commercialism of the season was greatly enhanced by the very cool soundtrack. Trio piano jazz, a hip young cat from San Francisco by the name of Vince Guaraldi. Linus and Lucy and all the rest were blessed not just by finding the meaning of the season by the cartoon's end, but by some of the most stellar music ever synced to animation.

And so it is the season again: of mulled cider on the stove for my guitar students, making Christmas gifts for our families on the Mac to the strains of the late Vince Guaraldi (and an old-timey Christmas recording by Bobby Horton that I just love), struggling to find time to send holiday greetings by mail and internet to all the friends and family we see too rarely. Soundtracks to our own holiday moments - traditions we hold dear, and of course, now with baby Madeleine Rose, a host of new memories and traditions await.

I had hoped that I would have some holiday gifts ready for you, but I'm afraid we won't see the new CD showing up on the doorstep until after New Year's Day. We're essentially finished mixing, mastering is next up, and once it goes to Oasis Duplication and all their elves get on it, it should be in around the 1st of the year. The green guy on Mt. Crumpet might slow down the delivery, but just like in the cartoon, he can't stop it.

Music is the soundtrack to so many moments in our lives - as kids, as teenagers, as adults. That song that riles us up when we work out, the first time we listened to the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album, the first time we heard one of those old love songs from the movies and suddenly got it. My new CD is perhaps a personal soundtrack to these times we're living in. These are not easy times. We've endured much together in these six years since 9/11. Many of our neighbors are facing hard times economically. And a war drags on claiming precious members of our American family with no end in sight. It is a challenging time to be an artist, an American, a human being. And yet it is at these holidays that we are most open to the possibilities of
hope. As long as there is hope, there is bounty.

As I look back on the year that I can't believe is half over (never mind 11/12ths finished!), I certainly find much that I will not forget anytime soon. A year that brought joy to some and misery to many. While I worked my tail off in the studio and on the road, we observed the 400th anniversary of the landing at Jamestown, we watched with horror the massacre at Virginia Tech, we shook our heads in disbelief at the ethics of politicians and star athletes. Drought clutched our throats throughout the mid-Atlantic and southeast. A man finally went to jail for murdering two black teenagers during the summer that I was born. Somewhere in the night a whippoorwill called, and stars gleamed with light emitted tens of thousands of years ago. A cock crowed at dawn, and a baby was born. These are, the times we're living in.

And like all times, good and bad, these too shall pass. I do believe that our hearts are truly not "two sizes too small".

May your holidays be filled with hope and the rich gifts of unexpected joys, and may those joys find their way to those less fortunate in all the world's dark places.