All & Everything

Early in the process of collecting songs for this album I struggled with the order I should be putting them in.  I am a surprisingly logical person (for such a hopeless romantic!) so I was drawn to a chronological order to tell the story as it developed in time.  Problem was, it didn’t really work like that.  The earliest songs were already full-blown lovesongs, but a few written later went back to treat the way we got there, describing earlier impressions, the hesitance, the interesting factors that pushed us toward being a couple, often in spite of our own awareness or intentions.  One song from that first year, “Sunshine”, had more general lyrics (partly because my Orchid Highway bandmate Jamie had a hand in writing them) that fit an early perspective, but I didn’t like it as an album opener.  So I landed on a compromise, deciding to arrange a song order that followed a narrative arc as far as possible, building to where we are now (which is, very happy).

One song we recorded turned out so good, and just felt like the best introduction to the whole album that I could not resist promoting it to the lead-off position.  I wrote “All & Everything” a few years in, another full-blown ‘Mature Love’ song.  It does reach back to early origins in the line “you’re what I was looking for / when I didn’t look for anything” – a sentiment that creeps into other lyrics, as does “Kept me coming back for more.”  The idea of being overtaken by love almost passively (“Till I wasn’t leaving anymore”) is a theme in several other songs as well.  The refrain that grew out of that “Anymore” I made a key to the song’s structure, following it up with sections singing “Anyway” and “Anyone.”  The chorus (“You’re my be-all…”) and the title itself are my usual plundering of well-worn clichés from the long tradition of love lyrics.  All in all, this song is a pretty good summary or microcosm of the whole album, so in the end a good starting point after all!