James, Ian, rayc, Dave, Ghostgum, VideoTrack, Hans, Janne, Peter, Greg, and Ezekiel:

Thanks so much for stopping in and taking the time to comment. It’s really very much appreciated, and I continue to learn from all of you by your doing so. A few specific responses to some of your individual comments follow.

James: This one was a bit of bear for me—jinxed, I’m tempted to say. I won’t bore you with the details, but I did more versions of this song than any other effort, going back and forth to such a degree that I’m not quite sure what I’ve ended up with here, and, as I usually do, I hear all its flaws more than its better attributes. But the feedback has been encouraging, so . . . and yours, in particular, very kind . . . so that’s something to feel good about. Thanks again.

rayc and Ghostgum: Yeah, I was reminded just the a couple days ago my pronunciation of “Thames” was wrong (a clip of Helen Mirren on a talk show where she referenced that famed river). Because the challenges I had recording and mixing this vocal (again, I’ll spare the details), I was loathe to redo it at this time . . . but I will at some point, and hopefully it will be less painful. In the meantime, I’ll just rationalize that the singer, who like I has never been to London, is simply as ignorant as I am about the pronunciation and go with that, LOL. :-)

Thanks for the similar comment, Ghost, on Hamstead Heath. I’ve changed it in the lyrics and will similarly address the vocal at some point.

rayc: I did record this one in my usual space, and was less worried about doing so on this song because I suspected it wouldn’t work against the song. As it was, I still added a fair bit of reverb and tad of delay in the vocal. Took a while, but the vocal seemed to find its place in the mix.

Hans: My one worry on this song was the lack of a bridge—as when you have a song with no bridge you are really depending on either a strong solo, a key change, or other instrumental lift. For me the trumpet worked enough to do it. . . but I totally get where you are coming from and understand it. There’s actually a lot of reverb and delay on it already, but perhaps it needs more? I’ll revisit. Really appreciate the listen and comment.

Greg: Terrific suggestion . . . I’ll see if I can up the drums, particularly as the song moves along and more instrumentation kicks in. Thanks!

My best regards to you all,

Deej