such beautiful ridiculous things can happen when you're looking the other way .. but when a sideways glance reveals that crazy dream you forgot about, you're left wondering what could possibly become of it now ..

I followed a silly little river into a dark and sumptuous netherworld and when I woke up the next day I found myself gazing at the underside of perfection ..

because of a quiet love that brewed for a while and was left standing and curdling .. I dipped my spoon into the brew and poured onto my tongue a sour sweetness – kept pouring until it ran down the sides of my cheeks – kept pouring until it trickled down between my toes .. now I'm soaked and happy but catching a cold ..

I didn't mean to get you sick, my darling .. we can run and run until we sweat it away and soak each other another day

Just thought I'd post a few facts about this recording:

First off, this was actually an entry for a contest held by John Mayer when he was columnist for some magazine - Esquire, I think.  The deal was that he had some lyrics he had written and liked but the song he wrote around them never made it onto the album so he posted an excerpt of the lyrics onto the magazine's website and invited people to write their own music to his lyrics.  I submitted my interpretation.  I didn't win.  But I still am quite proud of it.

Like almost all of my recordings so far, this was entirely created by me, using MIDI drums and a borrowed bass guitar.  Other than the drums, there are no synthesizers on this recording.  The psychedelic Moog sounding tones you hear on some parts are actually my voice.  The only effect I used was a stereo delay.  In fact, I took adantage of this opportunity to do a lot of vocal experimenting.  That's just part of my thing, you dig?

Also, in the course of composing music around the given lyrics, I found that I wasn't able to complete the composition with the lyrics I had so I added some lyrics of my own at the end.  In fact, the title of the song, which came from those extra lyrics, is mine.  He didn't give us a title.

Just thought I'd throw up a few factoids for any interested parties.

BTW, if anyone is throwing an interesting party where I can throw up, please invite me.  I'll play a few tunes before I spew.  (But not this one - this was a one-off deal.)

That's the name of an album I recorded in my apartment a couple of years ago - Three Faces ..

I called it that because the album was a deliberate effort to explore the many facets of my musical personality (which is a direct extension of my actual personality -- duh).  I could have called it Six Faces if I'd wanted because there's really a lot in there but that would have made for a tricky album cover ..

I did the whole thing on my own - the writing, engineering, playing everything, etc.  The drums and keyboard parts were all programmed with MIDI with the sounds generated by a Roland JV-1010 sound module.  I did my best to make it all sound as authentic as possible with sometimes great results (but yeah, some of it sounds a little odd).  Overall, I was happy with what I ended up with because it represents my best effort from that year of my life.

The only real outside help I got (other than my friend, Mike, playing guitar on one tune) was from my most excellent friend, Danny Jacobs, who is a very successful independent sound engineer extraordinaire.  He totally donated his time and talent to mixing and mastering the whole convoluted project.  He's the reason the tracks all sound so crisp and clean.  Also, my friend Courtney (awesome photographer/graphic designer at fpphotography.com) took pictures and after I gave her the concept and the layout for the CD cover, she made it all look real nice.  Thanks Danny and Courtney!

Anyway, there are a few copies of this CD for sale at CDbaby.com.  I think they're, like, eight bucks or so.  If you've read this far, you should just go ahead and buy it.  It'll be a collector's item someday - right there in your big ol' CD collection, in-between Quarterflash and Sister Sledge.

.. CDBABY LINK for TONY REY: Three Faces -->
..http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tonyrey">.. src="http://www.cdbaby.com/covers/t/o/tonyrey_small.jpg"