Hi friends! This is something, right here. This piece of music is over 10 years old, and has been sitting, unfinished, on the hard drive of an old semi-broken DAW, in my closet, for that entire period of time. I can't tell you the full saga of this piece, but I'll tell you a little: I bought a $25 Harmony Monterey with a giant crack down the front of it. I made up a story about the previous owner of the guitar. That's it! Kinda.

This is the second project the Great and Powerful Gizmo worked on, and we wanted to do a rock operetta, but I had some harebrained scheme about working in dialogues between deceased musicians and us, and was writing these big instrumentals.. then one night I was working on the music I had stored up for that project, and this fell out instead, with the help of a bottle of Southern Comfort. Don't drink, kids! So this went in place of that rock operetta, operating under the false pretense of being the rock operetta, when, in fact, it is a 6 (8) song first-person narrative with a lot of palm muting.

We played it live 4 times, which was very complicated due to the instrumentation... we had two extras, a cellist and a violinist (Meghan and Marcy, respectively), and Jason and I both had multiple instruments strapped to us through the performances, and everyone's arms hurt. The transducer pickups on the cello and violin would feedback nonstop through the monitors, so we had to work out a rudimentary headphone monitoring system for them... it was rough! But, one of those four shows was a live performance on the University of Chicago's Pure Hype show, a monumental occasion for all of us. That was actually the first performance with all four core members, and we had to work out the three part vocal harmonies while we were carrying our equipment up the stairs. We used Prof. Harold Hill's "Think System." This is the first time Genevieve sang on anything we did. During the first album she was too worried about the drums to do anything other than play drums, and some flute. She informed me that she could sing and drum at the same time, after I had already gone to some lengths to secure an additional vocalist and teach them all the parts that Genevieve already knew. Scamp!

Anyhow, listening back through this, I honestly can't say it's our finest work. Sorry for the spoiler. But, the song arrangements are strong, and the playing is very tight. Possibly our tightest. Gen and Jason's harmonies do a great job of obscuring my scraggly squawk. And Kyle's bass is the heaviest... ever! It's the story itself that's lacking, from my 10-year-later perspective. And that's totally on me. It does have some good bits (Sammy Hagar's spandex), I guess I just feel that the ending is a cop-out. Double spoiler! But, with that caveat, it is finished. Sans cello. Plus synth. And I am sharing it with you. I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Oh, and it's very, very heavy!

PS "Why did it take so long to finish?" you ask. Well, I broke the cello. On accident. You can't just lean those things up against pianos, you see. I thought it was like a big guitar, so I leaned it against the piano like a dummy. Fell over. Snapped the neck right off. No joke. By the time we got it back from the shop, we had already started writing a new set of songs, whose recordings are also unfinished (shame). That's why this piece has only one of the cello parts on it, and that snippet was taken from its first live performance. Meh.

Oh and PPS. It's all one piece. I know that's probably a pain, but it's supposed to be this way. You can cut it up if you want. You have our permission. If you download, there's a PDF with some pictures. And, Kyle painted that cover art.

Track 1, Overture to Why The Luggage? starts at 0, as you may have guessed.
Track 2 at 1:43 - Why the Luggage?
Track 3 at 4:22 - Pause to Reflect
Track 4 at 8:54 - Down in the Cellar
Track 5 at 12:23 - Blisters in my Throat
Track 6 at 15:23ish - Deep Sleep
Track 7 at 19:52 - I Will Never Complain
Track 8 at 22:58 - Finale
Those are pretty close. Total is 25:32. Thanks again for listening!