You read all the magazines,
Connect all your machines,
Weave your philosophies,
Then plug into your dreams.

You studied all the rules,
Used to know when to break them.
Paint yourself into a corner,
So activate your brain stem.

What's stopping you?
What's stopping you?
What's stopping you?
What's stopping you?

An imperfect perfection.
Ask anyone on a throne.
A riches-to-rags story
Of a loner left alone.

No time like the present.
The past won't come by twice.
You'll never be remembered
Serving memories over ice.

What's stopping you?
What's stopping you?
What's stopping you?
What's stopping you?

What's stopping you?...

This song, the final one recorded, is a note to my musician friend Patman, who collaborated with me on Chase and Too. I've always felt the guy had more music in him than anyone I've ever met. He can think up songs on the fly, play a variety of instruments, and he always has a knack for knowing what to play along to my songs (even when I give him no instruction). However, since our band split up fifteen years ago, he doesn't seem to have done much with it.

It's not like he doesn't want to create music. He has spent a small fortune building a recording studio. He's always talking about ideas he has for new music or for recording older songs. But whenever we try to record at his place, the system seems to not be working. I've recorded several albums of music during this time, struggling mightily, while he has the talent and does nothing. Bit of a waste, in my opinion.

Musically, the song is built up using the digital looping technology favored throughout the album. In this case, the bass line, mimicing the refrain, came first, and the guitar loops were improvised and arranged over that. Since a lot of songs end with the guitar solo and a fade out, I decided to be different and put the instrumental part at the beginning. I arranged the guitar loops at the start, then, when the lyrics come in, I used the same loops but arranged them differently to support the voice. To offset the sometimes mechanical nature of the loops, I overlaid some spacey synthesizer sounds and leads over the guitars.

As I worked on recording this, I worried that the song might be a bit too specifically about Patman to fit on this album. But when I finished, I felt that the idea of "what's stopping you?" could apply to anyone listening to this recording (or me, at times). We don't all want to be musicians, but surely most of us want to be something, do something, go somewhere? I decided it made a good song to conceptually wrap up the album (before taking a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway).

Rick Hines: voice, electric guitar, MIDI keyboard (piano/strings, synth sounds), 5-string bass, drum machine.

Produced, arranged, engineered, edited, mixed and mastered by Rick Hines.

Recorded December 14, 2009-April 11, 2010 at Rick's Studio, San Diego, California.