January, 2001

The Lessons We Have Learned was a record that flowed naturally from the work I had done with my friend Matt Mepham in our first band Pendulum. I had always been influenced by the softer side of pop music and a lot of the folk-less acoustic numbers on this record could have easily fit on a follow-up to our teen-alt-rock opus Thrah. For a couple of sixteen and seventeen year-olds, I think we did alright and for the most part I lump Lessons... in with those records. Some of the material from it would have been written just as we were "ending" Pendulum anyway.

Each track on the record was based around different sub-categories of lessons learned. By the age of 18 I was quite proud of the "heady" concept of the record although I'm not sure it pans out on repeat listens. The album has a very quaint, sweet quality that my family liked. Straight-forward is the word, I suppose. It was recorded over the course of a year in different locations including my basement and bedroom in my house in Dearborn, Edsel Ford High School, and also my dorm room and practice house at Kalamazoo College. They have since knocked that house down to build a parking lot which later became an open field.

As time has past on this record, I get more and more relaxed about judging it as anything more than a historical marker for where I was as a person, and who I was as a songwriter. On its own merits, apart from my development, I think The Lessons We Have Learned is a thoughtful, albeit naive record with a bit too confessional songwriting. However it is what it is and that's that.