Question and Answer

Pat will your songbook contain all of your songs and also the songs you have written with Lyle? Also, are the songs gonna include the head, changes and solo for each song? thanks sal

the songbook will include all of the original songs that have been recorded on all of the records that i have made since i started making records in 1975. the only exceptions will be a few tunes that really were just improvisations in the studio and a few tunes that i felt were so much more lyle's than mine that they would be more appropriate to the eventual songbook of his stuff that should also be coming out within the next few years. we have done an enormous amount of work on the book over the past 4 months or so, and right now we are just waiting to do the final check on what should be the last (or at least, next to the last) round of corrections. there will be something like 160 tunes in there, and they will be more or less in what we have to call "lead sheet" form. it will have correct melodies, chord changes, time signatures and essentially will be the same amount of information we had ourselves at the time we recorded the tunes. it is a huge undertaking - one that has literally taken years, and one that will represent all of the work of these past 2 decades. we are considering this a "first edition" - there is little question that we will probably forever be updating and refining and adding to it. we are very lucky to be associated with a publisher (hal leonard) that not only has worked hard with us on this and understood the difficulty of doing this right, but is doing a great job. i can say this, i do think it will be worth the wait - even for me, it was such a kick when i got the first rough compilation to just sit there and play through all the tunes, with right changes and right notes. when will it be out? i think by the middle of next year. believe me, no one is looking forward more to that day than me!