No Shortage of Good Ideas is a subtitle taken from the February 15th reading of A Year With C.S. Lewis, a collection of quotes and blurbs from some of C.S. Lewis's most popular Christian-inspired books. I had intended to use this as the title to The Art of Tactful Procrastination's follow-up. I just didn't necessarily expect that follow-up to be more of a compilation album. Or, as I like to call it, a "new(ish)" album.

"Tongue In Cheek" was recorded in 2004-2005 in Canton and Potsdam, NY, shortly after the breakup of Starways Congress. I believe this is one of the first things I put together once I completed and released Lemonymous in 2005. Like "Vampire" (below), it was one of the songs I lost publishing rights to during my tenure as a signed artist (2007-2008). It never got professionally mixed, and I didn't officially have the rights to it back until 2014. By that time I was already demoing Tactful Procrastination and had moved past the heavy music period that largely defined Middle Aegis. The only thing re-recorded for professional mixing was the non-solo guitars, which were done in 2022.

"Vampire" was one of the first co-writes I did with Ben Baker, whom I attended high school with, and who also played lead guitar in Starways Congress (2003-2004). It never appeared as a song in that band's repertoire and thus was never performed nor recorded with them. This was originally recorded around the same time as "Tongue In Cheek", and while I never did a professional mix of it back then, I almost released it as a single in 2006. Instead, I moved to Nashville and the track fell into the same black hole that "Tongue" did.

"Needless To Say" and "Past Tense Catastrophe" were both co-writes with Ben Baker during our time with Starways Congress. Both were mainstays in our set lists, and these two recordings, done in 2003-2004, were intended as demos to present to the band. As the riffs were all Ben, he performs on these. I did the lyrics and the arrangements. These particular mixes needed a couple touch-ups in terms of some extra guitars and sounds, but very little else was done before they went to professional mixing.

"Riot" was the b-side to "The Art of Tactful Procrastination" single. Intended as an homage to Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and a lot of that break beat stuff from the late 90s. Like most of the already-released b-sides in this collection, it has a slightly new mix for this release.

"Boys And Girls" is probably in the top ten of all the songs I've ever done. It's very much "the sound" I have always pictured in my head for myself - or it's at least closer to it than most of my other attempts. The chorus melody came to me one day in the shower and I had the song within days after that. I specifically channeled one of my favorite bands and influences, Garbage, and even referenced some of their Version 2.0 (1998) tracks in mixing. I don't know what it's about, but as a b-side to "Wait of The World" (and an outgrowth from the "boys and girls" line in that song) I think it fits nicely with it.

"Someday Soon", the b-side to "Still No Closer To Tomorrow", was written for my wife and given to her as a gift on her birthday in 2017. That version did not have drums. I tried to marry two ideas (see what I did there?) - that she is fiercely strong and independent, and that at the same time I somehow get to be with her. It's loose, but I think it works.

"Emerald", the b-side to "If Anybody Asks You", was originally recorded for 2003's Scarlet Dawn. I genuinely cannot recall why it didn't make it on the album, apart from perhaps not being enthused about some of the performance on it (which I've gotten over since then - nothing on this recording was re-done). I otherwise think from both a sonic and lyrical perspective it would've fit on that album quite nicely.

"If Anybody Asks You (Remove Your Shadow Mix)" was another track on that single release. I chose to add it here because I like it better than the version on The Art of Tactful Procrastination. Stylistically I don't think it would have fit on there, but were I to do this song live I think this would be the version I would do. I feel like it gets to the paranoid quality of the song much better.

"Nothing To Fear" is the b-side to "Addie". This is another melody that came in the shower with lyrics that seemed to just flow right out of me. It's meant to be dark and sinister... giving off a sense of being surrounded by despair in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But the idea is if you can hear the angels, they must be close by, so there's that sense of hope and comfort despite the environment. Even with these dark undertones I feel it sits next to "Addie" well because while that song is about a father singing a lullaby to his daughter, "Nothing To Fear" is an exaggerated and overdramatic representation of the daughter hearing her father sing her a lullaby - she's surrounded by darkness and fear and the unknown, but his voice breaks through and calms her. This song really makes more sense in that context.

"Rainfall" was intended to be the b-side to "Some Kind of Never", however, that single didn't happen. That's probably a good thing as this song was really, really difficult to mix. I don't know why. It follows a similar thread as "Nothing To Fear" in that it feels like darkness but there's hope and comfort within.

"Squeaky" is a little instrumental that would have been intended for a "Streetlights Look Like Diamonds" single which, like "Some Kind of Never", didn't happen. In fact, this was recorded at the same time as "Streetlights" and musically shares a lot of similarities. The title of the track was really intended as just a placeholder to refer to it until I had a real title. Apparently this was the real title after all!

"Long Day (Night Is Alive Mix)" features the piano part that this song was originally built around. This is closer to what the song might have been on The Art of Tactful Procrastination, had I not decided to add drums and take the song into different sonic territory than I had intended. Even so, I couldn't just leave it as piano and vocal only - some of the elements from the album mix are here too.

"The Cleansing of The Soul" is the very first ever digital recording I ever did. This was done on a program called Cubase for a music lab during my sophomore year of college in 1999. The assignment was to take a real world sound and apply music against it to see what we could come up with. I had decided to use a DAT recorder to get the sounds of a washing machine in my dorm, which I then brought into Cubase and (with some additional effects here and there) set it alongside a piece of music I was working on at the time. I wish I still had the original recording without the washing machine, but I suspect it would feel empty and wouldn't work quite as well. There are some very obvious Brian Eno things going on in here, and it's still something I regard quite highly as an early Ender Bowen experiment. Shout out to Michael Farley on this one!