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We had recorded this originally on the Angus album "Outstanding in Their Field". I wrote this song thinking about the voices in Angus (Kim Williams, Scott McDonald, Rick Lee and myself), so when we did the original I think we paid more attention to the vocals than what we could have done with it musically.

When we started "Political Pop" Chris Hedges had not yet joined the band, so we had done a few songs with our good friend Anthony Krizan. After we had a few labels interested in the record, they wanted to hear more songs that sounded like what they had received, so we brought Anthony back to do two songs..."Save Me" and "Higher". Anthony does some great slide on this tune.

This song is just a different mix. I think Tom Gordon and I had sent a couple tunes to Carter Humphrey to do. Not that we thought we needed more tweaking, I think it was more to just see what Carter had in mind. Nice vocals (Kim Williams) and guitar (Chris Hedges) on this tune as well. Randy Artiglere and Tom Nelson do a great job holding down the whole tune.

This song originally appeared on "Political Pop", this is just a different mix. This was a tune that Kathy Phillips, Kim Williams and I played at least 200 time live before it ever made it to tape. There was a version the Megan Ernakovich, Tom Gordon, Ray Silva and I made earlier, but this song really came a long way via playing it live.

This is one of the three or four songs that Tom Gordon and I sent to Carter Humphrey to mix. I think this one was the only one in contention for the original "Political Pop", but ultimately we went with all of Tom's mixes. Mr. Gordon brought a great presence to that record and it just would not have made sense to add one mix from someone else. Carter did do a great job though.

I view this song as a break out song from Randy Artiglere and Tom Nelson. The two of them actually are this entire song. Tom's drum part has cause many fill in drummers to stop dead in their tracks and ask often,"Is it alright if I just play it straight". "NO". And Randy's break down on the bass is killer. Randy really jumped into this one as a song. It seemed to me it was a turning point for Randy, when he stopped just playing a part and played entirely for the song. it was cool to see.

"Right Beside You" was featured on the 700th episode of Fox's This Week in Baseball. One of the cooler moments for me in my musical career.

This is another song from Angus' "Outstanding in the Field". This song we were playing very often and was crowd favorite live, so we figured "what the Hell?" and we recorded it. Chris Hedges has a great solo on this tune as well, that alone was worth re-recording it.

This is another redo from the Angus album "Face the Day". We were playing "Wake Up" live, so it just made sense on one of these sessions to lay it down. Tom and Randy were really tight and Chris did a great job on the lead guitar work. Chris adds and edge to this version that is not in the Angus version, probably because his guitar is smokin' and I was playing lead on the Angus version. I love the ending of this version. Live, we would actually let a much as a minute go by before we hit the last note.