I want to give special thanks to Chuck Brady and Eric Rosen for patient direction and support while recording and touring. Very special thanks to Siri Rosen for your extremely hard work promoting my music and to Carol Brady for regular encouragement and your kind assistance. Thanks also to Nick Jorgenson, Mike Wilson and Pawel Sek for helping to make this record better. Geoff and Jarin - thank you both for great conversation over cheap wine! Always a pleasure working with you both. Cover photo taken by Jarin Blaschke Retouching by Erik Shafer and Patricia Reape Art direction and album design by Geoff Ryan All songs written by Aaron Brady Except 'I Know You Love Her' lyrics and music by Joel Frank and Aaron Brady Violin on 'We Never Compromised' and 'The Optimists' by Maria Kaneko Millar Viola on 'We Never Compromised' and 'The Optimists' by Entela Barci Cello on 'We Never Compromised' and 'The Optimists' by Amir Eldan Male background vocals by Michael J. Wilson Female background vocals by Kristyn Neilson Cocktail Party is Patricia, Colleen, Kathleen, and Marianne Reape, Yaritza Lewis, Jodi Zaricki and Adrian Cooper These songs are a montage of my New York life, touring life, love life and political considerings from early this century. While writing this record, I had been particularly interested in the unknown, in lingering questions, in anticipation, and in projecting forward to try and guess what I might think when I'm wiser. I think I occasionally came up with some good insight, but that might prove to simply have been a bit of life imitating art. I'm less interested in answers than i had been before the 21st century - I figured out that questions lead somewhere and answers just keep you where you already are. The answers sort of thinking had stunted my spiritual and emotional growth for a bit, but ended up facilitating a spurt that resulted in the songs on my previous records 'Maybe...' and 'ab'. Once I learned to ask some spiritual and emotional questions, I moved on to the larger life questions and some political questions by the end of this follow-up album, 'The Optimists'. My favorites from this record: - We Never Compromised, best production on the record - Real Love, best sentiment and is what I want for my life - We Don't Understand, dedicated to Kim - part of my post 9/11 group of close friends in New York who died a year later of cancer at age 20 - The Optimists, a pitch perfect sentiment from every side of my schizophrenic, American mind in 2005 and the best song I've ever released.ASIN: B000MWS6I4VSKU: GGV.B000MWS6I4.LNCondition: Like NewAuthor/Artist:Aaron BradyBinding: Audio CD
