Where do mosquitoes go in the winter? What about the dragonflies that hunt them? The turtles lying lazily on sunny logs just next to a lake's surface - where are they all winter long?  Under snow, under ice, under water. Fish, the larvae of many flying insects and reptiles and amphibians like frogs and turtles slumber far below the white cold world in the darkness and relative warmth (about 4 degrees Celsius) of pond and lake bottoms in the winter. Try to imagine that transition - dazzling sunlight, wind, warm or cool oxygen-rich air and then for several long months a wet uniform darkness and stillness. Next imagine waking up, one eye at a time, slowly, paw by paw, feeling life return with tiny movements and then, feeling the sun's invitation come through the ice-free surface down to the gloomy depths to pull you upwards back into thin cold air to see a sky changing colours. I have to imagine that more than a re-awakening it's a rebirth, and a powerful example of the patient power of abiding.
I wrote Bit by Bit in March 2021 as a difficult winter was ending. I was walking, unhappily, when I looked up and saw the first intense flares of red on the high twigs of a Maple tree. It felt like a reward for just having made it to that day with eyes and a heart that could still see renewal above and sense happiness ahead.

When I was a kid there were only two serious career options in my mind - Marine Biologist or Astronaut.  Maybe you grew up in a mid-sized city in the eighties and thought you had the same options.  This song is about the two places I still haven't been but that still entice me into dreaming about new worlds and possibilities. I have seen and held a few starfish but I've never experienced a whale shark - the largest fish in the world. It's down there somewhere though, and that's exciting to picture - swimming from dark to light and back again, its giant tiny-toothed mouth slowly taking in the sea tonne by tonne.  Despite that image, I would consider a trip under the sea in sunny shallow water but I know I'm never going to space. But, thinking about space, designing a rocket, scripting whimsical adventures? Sign me up! I'm uninterested in NASA's latest attempt to send big or small metal things outside the earth;s atmosphere, but if a kid from the neighbourhood knocks on my door with a plan to build a moon rocket, I'll be there with a fishbowl on my head. I'm a little big now, but I can still fit in a dishwasher box, plus i've seen all the Star Wars movies so I'm qualified for space travel.

Picture of a place
Martin, Mike and I recorded this one live on April 14, 2019. You can hear the rain on the recording. Martin and I did the guitar, singing and clarinet live into one ribbon microphone, plus we were wearing suits so it wasn’t easy. The occasional taps you hear are my sleeve buttons hitting my guitar. The only dub was the Tuba by Jay Burr, but you wouldn’t have known that was the case if I didn’t tell you because he plays so naturally and responsively.  Leon Redbone is a big inspiration to me and I hope you can hear his influence in the arrangement of this song. 

Recording can be difficult because of the endless options to re-do the whole song or even a bar or a note, and also because of the infinite hardware and processing options. I find it overwhelming. Martin and I arranged vocal parts that meshed and we performed it well together so I didn’t want to record them separately, so we did it all at once. If any fidelity is lost or musicianship unimproved by tampering, so be it. It felt great to do a good take and know we were done without any further analysis or repair. Plus it’s old-timey and I’m  nostalgic.
The events in the song were inspired by walking to the grocery store (about 1 km from our house) with Oscar on one of the many February snow days of 2019. Snow days are usually a source of joy for teachers and children but somehow I managed to be grumpy about it. Maybe because it was the fifth one and Oscar walks really, really slowly when there's so much snow to kick, pick up and eat. Oscar's got the ability to enjoy where you are and what's happening right now, especially when it's snowing, and maybe I've become a little less hurried and a little more thoughtful thanks to his slow-walking ways.