Chris Anderson's 14th full-length album.

In the summer and fall of 2003, I was deep into the writing and recording of five very distinct albums. The main project at hand was a very important album that was to be called The Crown. Other songs from those sessions were to make up the album, Waiting For The Wolves. Every so often, however, I liked to shake things up by recording some older songs, stuff that had yet to be tackled. A huge trove of songs that were originally written between 1999-2001 were recorded, and those eventually were split into two albums as well. While the Sun Moon Star album centered around songs that had been performed by my band, Ebb, this album features songs that were written at that same time but left on the shelf, for one reason or another. The 5th album was a collection of some of my more "classic" older songs, updated for that particular era.

Like the Nine Miles West album before it, and so many albums that came since, the point of this set was to look back to a particular era of my songwriting, record new versions of the songs that fit with what I was doing at the time, and fashioning them into the album that could (or should) have been. While those albums aren't as exciting as some big creative project, they are just as rewarding. There is nothing better than making sense of things.

I can't say I remember too much about the recording and the sequencing of this album but I do recall the excitement I felt every time I uncovered one of these old songs and gave it the "modern" treatment (much like what I have been doing the last few years, in a different setting). While I am sure all of these songs, at one point, had been considered as songs to bring to the band, none of them had ever been worked out. Some of them had originally existed as rough sketches, so new lyrics and arrangements were crafted during these sessions, and some of these songs turned out quite good. To this day, however, only one of these songs, "Bristol", has ever been performed live and only a couple of these have been properly recorded. They will all get their turn. Until then, dig this set.

Oh yeah, the cover was drawn with crayons in about ten minutes, right before I took the art to the printers. I have no idea what is going on there but I think it's cool.

Lastly, the title. Several years prior, during the time that Ebb was turning into a real band, I solicited friends and colleagues for ideas on what to name the band. My great pal Rust Rudolph crafted a list of well over 100 potential names, many of which were fantastic (and all of which were rejected by the band). Among those was redlightgreen (it may have been stylized as Red Light Green but whatever). While the name didn't fly with the band, there is an improvisation on a tape that used that as a title and it always sat in my head as a title to be used later. Since these songs date from around the time those lists were crafted, it only made sense to use it for this album. Thanks, Rust!

-CA, 3/11/19