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During the next twenty-five years I attempted to grow up. It still hasn't happened. I spent seven years in the U.S. Air Force, graduated from college, earned a Masters Degree in Business Administration and treated myself to a piano and piano lessons once I finally finished my education. John and I remained in touch during my Air Force days, and I swore I was coming home to Baltimore after I was discharged. I did, and we immediately started playing music together again. Some five years later, the unforgiving disease of multiple sclerosis wrapped its arms around John, and his days of playing the guitar with me came to an end in the 1990's. However, his forté had always been his voice. So we kept getting together, him singing and me playing and trying to harmonize with him.

Back in 2000, John had the brilliant idea that we should get our hands on a multitrack recording device and get our old band back together and make a reunion recording. I borrowed a machine and we pulled it off, but the recording wasn't anything I'd want to play for somebody. It wasn't because we were bad musicians; it was because I didn't have a clue what I was doing on the recording device. The other band members went their separate ways, leaving John and I with an empty feeling about the experience. I decided that I was smarter than the machine, and I went out and bought my own. It was a Yamaha four-track analog tape machine. John and I spent the next two years recording, during which time I taught myself the fine art of mixing. We finally outgrew the machine and needed more than four tracks, so I bought a digital multitrack recorder that gave us a wonderful new array of options we didn't previously have. Very steep learning curve, though. This machine was light years ahead of what I was used to dealing with, and it took the better part of two years for me to really figure out all of its fine points. The two of us were still recording almost every weekend during this time. We never did anything with the recorded music, but it was gratifying to hear how it sounded. Finally, in the spring of 2003, I decided that I had played and recorded enough of everybody else's songs and it was time to start writing my own stuff. "Fountain of Youth" was the first one. I'd written some songs many years ago, but nothing like this. John and I were off and running for the next two years, recording and mixing songs that I wrote.

But we were missing something - and that something came to us with Andrew Luttrell. On the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance of ours named Mitch, I walked up to Andy one night in August of 2005 and said we needed to get together and play some music. In hindsight, he must have thought I was crazy; we had never met each other before that night. But he agreed and anyone who's reading this can figure out the rest of the story.