Black Angel Wings

"Miss Watson...told me about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good." - From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.

A professor of mine once told me that the best stories are always about one of three things: life, love, or death. It doesn't matter if the story is set in some galaxy far, far away, or if it's a story about some kid traveling down the Mississippi and his misadventures while doing so. And I suppose it doesn't really matter because those three things - life, love, and death - are what drive us as human beings. It doesn't have to be our own life, our own death, or even our own love really - whatever the case, the decisions made and the things that take place inside those ideas and within those stories affect how we feel about our own lives, our own loves, and our own deaths.

I don't want to take it too seriously, and continue to drive you around in the philosophical circle that is my brain, so I'll just tell you what this little intro is all about.

"Midwestern Devils and Angels" is an album full of stories about the best and the worst of us. The rights and the wrongs. Faith and lack thereof. Love, life, death, and the choices made in between. The choices made because of.

It has been quite a while since "The Adventures of John Barleycorn" and since I released anything new as a cohesive whole, and this album is just that. Hopefully it takes you somewhere. Hopefully you can get lost inside it and find something worth thinking and talking about inside of these 18 songs (I know it's a lot, but I could've made it much, much longer. Four years of songs can do that!).

And like Huckleberry says, "...All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change...". And for me, that's the cliff notes of this album. We are not good nor bad or really anything at all. We are constantly bouncing between the blacks and whites and trying to fall somewhere in between, in that ever-desired gray area of life, and love, and death. All we want is to not get stuck along the way. To change and grow; to go "somewheres", wherever that may be.

See you along the way.........

-Fitz