When the Wind Comes Down

There's something magical about this song to us.  It's the fourth song
we recorded, and it also ended up being #4 on the album.  The basic
tracks (Ross's guitar and vocals) were intended to be rough, just so I
could learn the song, but his performance was so nice, we just built
the song around it.  Our daughter, Kyra, was just about to be born
when we were recording this song, so it's very likely the first song
she ever heard.  She really responded to it after being born, and she
still loves it to this day.  It's dedicated to Kyra in the notes.

Our niece called it "the song about the gas station", not having ever
heard of train stations.  The mix on the album is actually the demo
mix.  It has a bit of a "fog" to it, which could fairly be attributed
to poor mixing, but therein lies more of the magic of this song.  The
"fog" contributes to the dreamlike and wistful quality of the song.
After careful consideration, we decided to keep the magical demo mix,
just as it is.

A reviewer referred to my guitar solo tone, which I carefully chose to
imitate an Eric Clapton "woman tone" type of sound, as "a cheap
electric played through a toy amp miked in a room with no furniture".
That phrase really cracked me up so I've remembered it for all this
time.  Of those I've asked specifically about this guitar solo,
opinions are divided right down the middle.  Half like the tone, half
don't.  To me, that means it's probably expressing what I want it to
express.  What do you think?

Didja notice the flanger on April's voice at the very end?  We used a
real analog MXR flanger, patched into all this nice quiet, modern
gear.  Our digital effects just didn't sound as good!

Our first ideas for the album cover were to attempt to create the
train station scene suggested by this song, but there was no way we
were going to pull it off with our very finite budget.