Fair warning, if this was a VH1 “Behind The Music” documentary, this would be the dark segment. I had pretty much everything. I had a good amount of money, a lot of fans, and was doing things like writing for and performing with an orchestra at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. But my depression, anxiety, and depersonalization was simply out of control. I didn’t like anyone, anything, nor myself. I had a 3-room recording studio in a nice neighborhood and found myself no longer getting joy from making music. Yet, for the first time in my life, a lot of people were wanting to hear a new “Flashbulb album”. A follow-up to “Soundtrack to A Vacant Life” that was even better.

At the expense of total transparency, I’ll say it: My motivation for making Arboreal was a suicide note, or a final chapter that would be a window into how I felt leading up to what I thought was inevitable. This was the fruit or seed that my tree would leave for the future, hence the title. I donated a lot of my money to charity, and stopped taking any prescription drugs to treat depression or anxiety. Everything you hear in Arboreal is refined over and over and over. Skeletons was 30+ minutes of music, almost a whole album, chopped down into what I thought was the perfect ending to Arboreal, and pretty much everything in the world.

After I finished it, I couldn’t believe I made it. I fell in love with the album while mastering it, and as a result, fell back in love with myself. Seeing that light at the end of such a long tunnel made me weep, and in less than 24 hours I wrote and recorded a new final track for the album. An album I now had every intention of sowing the rewards from.