Music has saved my life over and over again. What does that mean?

It means that from being 4 years old in my hometown of Edmonton, Alberta...

... and listening to mail order childrens stories and music... Little Pedro, The Pony Express, and Babar the Elephant...
...to overhearing my brother and sister’s 45s and LPs of Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and the Comets, and Pat Boone in the late 1950’s...
...to my mom and dad’s taste in Mantovani, Caruso, and Mario Lanza...
...to my grandmother’s love of Perry Como and Andy Williams...
...until my first teen love affairs with the harmonies of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, the Twist and Shout Beatles, and the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan...
...to being given my first guitar at 15, then learning E minor, A minor, and the major D, C, and G chords...
... then starting to write my own songs ...
...to playing some of my first original tunes in a high school folk group...
...to seeing 1966 Gordon Lightfoot in his Canadian Railroad Trilogy era at Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium...
... and a few years later,  for 50 cents, Bruce Cockburn touring solo with his first album in an Edmonton church basement...

...melody, rhythm, and story poetry has woven spine tingles and heart beat together with my dark nights of the soul...
...its’ unifying, illuminating, and restorative power igniting faith and vitality time after time...
 
 ... and then, all of a sudden, I was...

...56 years old, with a late mid-life itch to finally record a full length CD ...
...the initial vision a legacy project for family and friends that expanded  through the talents of  producer Oliver Johnson and great session musicians into soundscapes so appealing to my ears that I wanted to widen the circle of possible listeners...

...and a year and a half later Already Broken was born...and through the experience, another 57 year old self was too ...one more appreciative of what it takes to render lyric and musical idea to disc... proud yet humbled that it took this long...

...another self joining the selves of husband, father, son, brother, friend, dog dad, psychotherapist, photographer, canoe camper, driftwood lover of the arts, environmental advocate, and the other selves too numerous to mention that accompany me into the Mystery of  this Already Broken life...