"The First" is a kind of concept album. The concept being: get something out there FIRST, so I have something to sell at gigs and play for venues at which I hope to be booked.

At 49 years of age (!!!) it's a fine time to start one's music career completely from scratch, but here I am. I imagine all kinds of rich album oriented rock albums to pour forth in the years to come, and this EP will be distinguished as "The First."

(Note: if, in fact, it also turns out to be "the last," it means something debilitating has happened to me, and to send help QUICK!!)

It's an ill time in history to be a singer songwriter, I think, as the very term tends to connote a fey, folky individual in an oversize sweater and not the hale stalwarts of the classic rock era: Joe Walsh, Richard Thompson, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and such. Fellows that were expected to rock as much as feel "the pain of it all." Fellows apt to express things with a dark humor more than mere irony. If it's not too late, I'll prefer to camp with them as I set out than the sons of the Mumford clan, if you please. (Although I do like them, too.)

By way of introduction to this initial collection of five songs, it's a Whitman Sampler of guitars: "Monday Love" showcases the Jay Turser 3-string octave bass, "Big Hot Tears" is the Eko guitar/bass 5-string octave hybrid, "Finally" has the Ocean Laguna 3-string bass, "Solid Gray" is the Eastwood guitar/bass octave hybrid, and "Late or Later"—the only track with 2 guitars dubbed together—has the Gibson Studio 3 string octave guitar and the Jay Turser 3 string octave bass.

For percussion, I overdubbed a Korg WaveDrum Oriental, trying to add a bit of a World flavor overall.

The EP was recorded in my home studio in the backyard, on a Zoom mrs1608, never using more than 10 tracks.

The cover art is all mine, as well, with a nod toward long-term branding, a-la Grateful Dead, where album cover art becomes iconic and applied to bumperstickers and t-shirts. In my case, that...thing in the square was an attempt to draw a specific object that went somewhat awry. In looking at it again, I saw a kind of Rorschach quality to it, perhaps, where anyone looking at it might see something very different than what I meant it to be. Write me and let me know what you see in it. If you guess it right, I'll tell you.

So I sort of rushed this EP out to coincide with my marketing plans/career launch. I've got an extensively good full album I'm working on to be released in the Spring of 2013, Lord willing, and that will be my first album, but today, here's "The First - EP."

– Claxton