I spent Thanksgiving weekend in 2006 and 2007 in Rochester NY with my sister Barbara Johnston, who is an excellent drummer. She helped me record demos during these visits for two of the three albums I had written but not recorded – Lies and Best Kept Secret. I recorded her playing drums on my portable Zoom digital studio and when I got home, laid down piano, bass, keyboard, and vocal parts. The demos of the Lies album turned out especially well. I liked them so much, I decided that if I could transfer my Zoom files to a real studio, add guitar tracks, and re-record the vocals, I could turn these demos into a ‘real’ album, similar to Bruce Springsteen’s Atlantic City album, where the demos actually did become the album. So this is how ‘Lies’ became the fifth kjband album. I found an engineer willing to do this, and this time, I made sure he was a nice guy! I was so fortunate to meet Gary Georgett and to work with him on this album. He knew a guitarist, Chris Delis, who had subbed on Broadway for the U2 musical – Spiderman: Turn off the Dark. He is extremely talented and did a great job. I am particularly proud of the lyrics to this album which were inspired by a series of classes I had taken that taught of how one could learn to achieve a greater awareness of one’s life, and to learn to wake up from a state of mechanized, learned, sleep-like existence. Many lyrics refer to the lies that people tell themselves. I did all of the vocals on the album and there is no saxophone or strings. The stripped down sound features my piano work more than any other album has. The album was started and finished in 2012. This album was dedicated to my late mother, Nancy Johnston, and the last song on the album, ‘Thank You’ is a tribute to her. Two hidden tracks at the end of the disc are completed ‘demos’ from the unrecorded Best Kept Secret album.