The songs that follow, "Our Day Will Come" and "The Spirit of '76," are stunning, hit-worthy tunes that outline the beginning of what is a complete album – with start, middle, and end – and many peaks and surprises along the way.  

The prodigious Cavanagh was raised in Queens and Long Island, and his first radio airplay came with a local rock band at age 13.  Later, he went to NYU to study classical music composition, then on to learn film scoring at Berklee College of Music.  While in college, he took bass lessons from session legend Jerry Jemmott (Aretha Franklin, B.B. King), studying the tabla with Pandit Ramsamooj, and sat in with bands on piano or drums.

Following college, Neil returned to New York City where his chops and diverse musical vocabulary led him into a variety of situations, including sessions at The Hit Factory with pop legend Michael Jackson. 

Neil quickly developed a reputation for wildly eclectic shows that blended beautiful acoustic songs with offbeat arrangements and hypnotic improvisations.  He often appeared solo with a bass drum at his right foot and a guitar loop pedal with which he'd create devastating, virtuosic textures and punctuate the deep, funky rhythms of his live act.  

Cavanagh began Short Flight two years ago, which doesn't seem so long considering he did most of it on his own.  Neil played all of the instruments (vocals, guitar, bass, keys, drums, harmonica, etc.), he handled all of the production and most of the engineering, and he wrote and arranged all but one song ("The Kiss" by the late Judee Sill, a haunting, classically inspired folk singer from the 70s).   The recording began at The Hit Factory in New York, and was completed in Los Angeles, where Neil currently resides. 

While he may have worn nearly all of the hats on the production and performance, creativity and impeccable musicianship abound.  Neil's singing and acoustic guitar work shine throughout.   Also revealed here in its full flower is a monster electric guitarist whose effortless leads serve the songs perfectly.  Ethereal slide atmospherics, cascading counterpoint lines, and some Hendrix-worthy pyrotechnics complement the tasty arrangements and huge hooks.

Neil is not at all afraid to reference solo Paul McCartney – so much so that he wears a McCartney t-shirt on the inside jacket.  Many songs on Short Flight explore the sonic territory of McCartney's first two solo albums (McCartney and Ram), when the music was folksy but not folkie, singable but not saccharine, with basslines almost as memorable as the melodies, and melodies that stay with you for a real long time.  

Elliott Smith, who also wore his Beatle obsession on his sleeve, is another major influence over this music, as is fellow late brooder Jeff Buckley (and Jeff's folkie father, Tim Buckley, too for good measure). 

But it's the light that shines through the darkness that makes Short Flight to a Distant Star so special.  An album about transitions, much is made of sleep, death, and parting; a fair amount of time is also spent on awakenings, new love, and the achievement of world peace.  Instrumental transitions link the album's different moods, themselves offering a meditative state of consciousness: a float through space, a bit of time travel, even a good ol' fashioned acid trip.

In the true spirit of classic rock and folk that inspired Short Flight, there's much here for the listener to dissect and analyze lyrically and conceptually.  The album's title is both uplifting and bittersweet in sentiment, and the songs themselves could have a variety of meanings, all depending upon the listener's point of view. 

However interpreted, one thing is for sure: this is a Short Flight that we will want to take again and again.

Neil Cavanagh's Short Flight To A Distant Star is being released on September 11, 2007 through the Kindred Rhythm Music Group (KRMG), an eclectic Manhattan-based label group that released vocalist Roberta Gambarini's Grammy-Nominated debut album, and jazz legend Jack DeJohnette's first new age project, which was also Grammy Nominated.  KRMG will distribute the project to all of the major digital retailers, and to traditional retail through its agreement with Koch Entertainment Distribution.

Cavanagh will support the release with shows on both coasts, with a special focus on his home cities of New York and Los Angeles.