For my second album, Pretending, instead of a collection of songs, I wanted to tell a story and feature the newer songs I had written, rather than reaching into my catalog of older songs. My marriage was not going well and the lyrics show an arc of love songs, then quickly of disappointment and disillusionment. The title track describes myself as someone who felt that even when feeling happy, must be only pretending. My friend Rick Klimowics had broken away from Tacher Studios where the first album was recorded and so we recorded this album on his own studio. This time, Rick played all guitars and bass, and we brought back Dave Dionisi on saxophone. Rick got very sick and in fact fell into a coma when we were almost done with the album, and his wife sold his studio out from under him while he was unconscious! I did a couple sessions with the person who bought the studio, who then told me he was going out of business! Finally after several months of asking and waiting, this person finally gave me the hard drive of the computer which contained the music files. One song on the album, Alone, has no drums on it. This is because we searched far and wide and never found the drum tracks that had been previously recorded for this song. As Rick very slowly recovered, I was forced to find someone else who used the same software who could complete the album with me. Work on this album started in 1999, and with all the delays and hassle, was not finished until 2003.