My father had a way with words. He always said, “You will either kill what you love or it will end up killing you”. I am sure that he is not the original author of that little zinger – but he could paint a broad, dark stroke with just a couple of words. He really should have been the songwriter…

Two nights later I wrote 16th Avenue. The song is about giving up on the only thing that you have ever loved. It took as long to write as it did to play. The words just came. The first thing that I thought was: I can’t wait to play this live.

THAT IS WHEN I REALIZED… I CAN’T KILL IT. IT HAS TO KILL ME.

The rest of the record came just as easy. I wasn’t worried about being commercial or politically correct and I didn’t change names to protect the guilty. I was writing these songs just for myself. I considered most of them just too personal to ever release.

Dave Keefer, my guitar player and best friend since I was 12 years old, convinced me to record these songs with the band. I will be forever grateful to him for that because all of a sudden I am enjoying it again. I hope you do too.

– LARK

the freedom of the open road. Running down an old two-lane with the windows down and the radio up…that was heaven! I still do that today, and I still love every minute of it! Sometimes I forget where I am and where we’ve been, and I think of myself as that small-town kid from Kentucky…riding the back roads. A lot of time and energy (and RISK) goes in to a recording project. I hope you enjoy this music. I hope you can tune in and relate to it. And I hope to see you out on the road somewhere soon. So…thank you for listening!.

Monty grew up in Bakersfield, CA with his parents and three brothers.  Music was big in the Byrom home because if you wanted to listen to it, you had to make it.  Monty’s father, a crooner himself, taught him to play guitar.  Billy Mize, Buck Owens, and Merle Haggard as well as Otis Redding, Bobby Womack, and the like heavily influenced him in the beginning.  As a teenager he was introduced to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, and Sly and The Family Stone.  These discoveries led him to rebel against his country start.  Except for The Outlaws, Charlie Daniels, Willie and Waylon, Monty stepped out of that world and into rock and blues.

Mom, confessed to me during phone calls on a number of occasions that she didn’t think that she had the strength to sing on this project. “Please…” I remarked astonished,” Just bring that attitude!” She did. This record was recorded old school style on 2″ tape with a MCI tape machine through a vintage Harrison console. It needed to be warm and fat. Mom sang her vocals (sitting in her walker, without any lyric sheets) through a vintage Neuman U-87 microphone. Thank God that mom was able to hear most of the unfinished record before she left us.