Escape...to a Paradise State of Mind!

Island Standard Time

 
By the Pool
Sometimes a vacation can lead to a new life. And sometimes Paradise wears a string bikini. You just have to be open to the possibilities.
Margarita Monday 
Mondays suck, right? Well, I used to think that. But given how I feel about every day being a holiday, I wanted to figure out a way to make Mondays suck less. My solution was to put a particular carrot at the end of that stick, so that I'd have something to look forward to, that would help me keep a good attitude during the day.
Worst Day Sailing
There's a lot of wisdom riding around on the back bumpers of cars. One day I spotted this gem: "The worst day sailing beats the best day working." It's true. I worked hard researching this song on several sailing trips around the San Francisco Bay. It's a wonderful job, but nobody's got to do it.
Friend You Just Met 
One of the things I love about playing live is when my friend meet and party with each other, and I figured a song about that might help "break the ice." And then I started to think about some of the issues and debates in our headlines, and remembered that we really have more in common with one another - carnivore and vegetarian, Red and Blue, pick your divide - than we have different. We're all human. We all have hopes, dreams, needs, desires, and fears. We all want to be loved. We all want to be remembered. And wouldn't it be a better place if, instead of as a potential adversary, we saw that person next to us as a friend we just haven't had the chance to meet yet?
Island Dreaming 
Second honeymoon, anyone? When deadlines and multiple demands make it hard to find the "quality time" necessary to nourish and nurture your relationship with the most important person in your life, sometimes you've just got to get away.
Beach Front Day 
It's rare that I've been able to write a song that fits more than one purpose. This is one. I wrote it initially for the good folks at BeachFront Radio, one of my favorite places to listen to Trop Rock. But I also wrote it to stand on its own as a song about taking the occasional "mental health day" and heading for the shore, that people who've never heard of the radio station could enjoy.
Margarita 
The legend says that the drink was named after a woman, one evening down in Mexico by an enraptured bartender. Some women are at least as intoxicating as a good drink; the best ones are even moreso. This song is dedicated to the tasty concoctions it has been my privilege to sip.
Pirate Vacation
What is it about pirates that captures our imagination? Piracy's rather nasty in real life - think "Somalia." I guess we all grew up on either Errol Flynn or Johnny Depp. Or maybe it's just that, living in the nation that has one of the lowest numbers of vacation days per year in the First World, we're just starved for a little "Arr" and "Arr."
Island Standard Time 
I wrote this song inspired by two things. The first was a statement by Howard Livingston, one of my favorite Trop Rockers, to the effect that we need to remember what's important - the sun rises in the morning, and it sets at night. Everything else is relative. The second was a "watch" I got from my dear friends Dale and Brian - Dale did the covers for Every Day's a Holiday - which contained some sand and a piece of slate with the word "now" written on it. As Dan Millman would say, "it's always now. And we're always here." And it's always Island Standard Time, at least between our ears.
Beach Bum Attack 
What if, the next time we were Down Island on vacation, we decided to say "screw it" and just stay? I'd like to call the office one day and just say, "Hi; I'm not coming in again. I've had a Beach Bum Attack."