"Someday" is a captivating mix of original, heartfully crafted Americana, Country, Soft Rock and Blues, professionally produced and packaged. Notable music critic Alan Monasch describes it best in his review of "Someday" below.

10 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, COUNTRY: Country Rock



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"Someday": Catch It While It's Here
By Alan Monasch

"Someday" is here, now, and the here and now is the realm of Rick Cordes on his new CD, "Someday." He is equally at home writing from the perspective of the universe or from the perspective of the individual human heart. The front and back covers of the CD show a large section of the earth in space; on the front, clouds form a peace sign over land
and ocean, and on the back there is a swirl that may suggest either spiraling clouds centered over a single place or the storm in the soul of any given individual in that world.

But make no mistake about it; for all the seriousness and perspective that those pictures imply, the songs are an engaging mix of country, blues and adult-oriented rock and pop. Rick's humor shows brightly in a number of songs, but what shows in every one of them is the way he expresses his real artistry, both lyrical and musical, with the touch
of the true professional craftsman.

The production, orchestration, arrangement and engineering of all the songs, by noted studio veteran Joe Barnett, are of intensely high quality and polished to complete brilliance. Barnett's playing on the CD, on keyboards and piano, is flawless, and, more importantly, supports the thrust of the songs in emotional tone just as it supports
Rick's technically masterful and lustrous guitar and vocals.

According to Rick's prefaces in front of each of the songs, the CD is a mix of material he wrote when he was young and his most recent writing as well. Taken together, they provide an adult look at the past, present and future, primarily by way of songs of love, or love and its loss, but also through songs about work and family.

And then there is the title song, "Someday," which Rick says, in his liner notes, brought the album together for him. "Someday" is about the values of the past, the disappointments of the present and the fear and
hope of the future, but it is also about the difference between the very young, the teen-aged and the mature adult, as seen by that mature adult. The music is crafted to be a mix and juxtaposition of old-school guitar strumming, this minute's edgy teen/young adult sound (exploding bass drum, buzzing electric guitar and backward cymbal) and the pure,
unadorned voice of a child. This is a marvel of technical achievement in the way that the production so thoroughly captures and amplifies the point of the song.

That point is that for all the popularity of the coolness and edginess of youth culture, it is the warm, interpersonally caring values of the mature that endure. The words say that the singer is seen by youth as uncool, but the production shows that this old fox has no trouble
reproducing the sound of youth and making it dance to his tune for his own important purposes. One line that stands out is "I stare at them in sad defeat as they call me words I can't repeat"; not many post-punk poseurs are going to be writing a strong lyric like that. The song ends with Jake Kronquist's innocent, clear, poignant and hopeful repetition of the word "someday" as the drum explodes.

The song about work and family is "In the Shine," which at its simplest is a paean to a father who valued hard work, but in the end it is much more. What appears to be an ode to dad's work ethic, which he imbued in his son, who imbues it in turn to his own son, is actually more about dad's nurturance of his son's selfhood and inherent value. The images of car-polishing in the chorus are paid off in its last line. "No job's done till you see your face in the shine" means "until you see your own value, the reflection of your own face, as well as the value of your own work," and that adds a level of universal importance about the
human soul to this simple song about a truck and a son and his son. The musical arrangement is clean and simple, as befits the style and substance of the song.

The other song about work is "Day Job Deja Vu," the strong, confident opening song of the CD, with its groove-laden, jazz-tinged arrangement and some very inventive and almost hypnotically melodic lead guitar by Joe Livoti, the other way-above-average Joe who graces the CD with his musical expertise.

The song is like a summary of Rick's first CD, "Missin' the Point," in that it extols the importance of not losing one's soul to one's employment, not "livin' a lonely compromise," but in summarizing, it refines and sharpens the message, and the main character makes a clear
choice at the end in answer to his question "Do I keep doin' what I'm doin'/Until the day I die/Or do I follow intuition?" by saying "Runnin' a green light out of the blue," an impulsive action that dramatically demonstrates he is following his intuition. This rocker kicks the CD
off with a bang that reverberates through "Someday" and its final cut.

"Wall Street Urinal" is the other work song on the CD, and I will not ruin Rick's characteristic humor for you by repeating it here, but underneath that hilarity is the serious question, "How do you know what's right or wrong?" and (oh, maybe I have to give just one joke line away) "Right in front of you might be your inspiration" is both a laugh-line image and a completely serious point about living.

The six other songs on "Someday" are about the coming and going of love. "Leavin' Here," with its beautiful, spare arrangement and a small group of strings supplementing acoustic guitar and bass. "Leavin' Here" shows us what a remarkable lyricist and melody writer Rick Cordes is;
with the simplest of words he makes the most poignant of stories. His signature twist of phrase says that he is leaving the lonely place he's been to return to the woman he loves, not leaving her, as one might think by just reading the title. The shimmering beauty of the memorable
melody underpins the lyric so gracefully. The line "I'm goin' where my heart leads me to" echoes the singer's decision to follow his intuition in answer to his question in "Day Job Deja Vu." It is no knock at all on Rick to say that this tune, conceived in his younger days, is very
James Taylor in its sophistication, in Rick's vocal and in his chord choices.

At the other end of the love/loss of love spectrum is "Moneyback Guarantee," both in sentiment and in style. It's a finger-popping blues tune about the high cost of infidelity that begins with a jazz bass line and settles into a country twelve-bar blues (with a sixteen bar
chorus) that rocks in its groove with a tasty rhythm guitar lick and simple percussion that consists, appropriately to the humor and the context of the song, of jingling coins. Without giving the humor away, I can say that there is a lovely laugh and candid spoken tag line at the end.

"Hurts So Bad to Lose" is a young man's song about love and loss, as Rick says in his preface. But the fact that he's recording it now invests it with a maturity of perspective that was probably only hinted at when he wrote it. Musically, I wonder whether in 1981 it would have had that minor chord before the second verse that foreshadows the
climactic, aching "It's over me and you" near the end. Joe Barnett's piano at the start, particularly behind "I guess that's something only dreamers dream," is striking and compelling. I like the line "We can't make love out of nothing"; the song has maturity beyond its years.

In its melody, harmony singing, simplicity, performance and
memorableness, "I Love You" reminds me of America's "Does She Really Love Me?" but I cannot imagine America pulling off the line "Could we ever be so wrong to never try?" as Rick does so naturally here. The piano and vocal at the end are just delicious, spicing the song with just enough dramatic tension to lift it above the bulk of songs that
are called "I Love You."

"When I Found You" could easily have been hackneyed, but even at his most prosaic, Rick turns familiarity into a virtue with a hooky and easily-remembered chorus and elevates the entire song with a turgid and obviously heartfelt performance. In many ways this is my favorite cut
on the CD, with Rick at his most declarative and vulnerable.

The final cut on "Someday" is "Got Up on the Right Side of the Wrong Bed," the quintessential Rick Cordes humor/twist song that by all rights should become a country comedy standard. Replete interesting and well-executed use of sound effects and with astute and creative wordplay (Rick's use of the euphemism "frickin'" bears out his comment in Someday" about "words I can't repeat," though I challenge you to determine the propriety of the penultimate line: "The sheets are clean"), this fictional-and-he-really-means-it-is-fictional-in-no-uncertain-terms anecdote in song form is a fitting and uplifting close to the album and
a very, very startling take on married love.

In short, "Someday" is here: Seize the day, seize this new CD and catch the artist and craftsman, Rick Cordes, whenever and wherever you can.

"Someday" - available at www.cdbaby.com/cd/rickcordes