The Reign recorded “Wall St. Wisdom” at Neverland Studio in 1991, but its roots reach back another seven years or so.

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Way back in 1984, a friend I’d met in college a few years earlier, Dan H, invited me to play bass for his second tour in the Netherlands. (If I’m understanding one of his old Facebook posts, which has a picture that includes me in my bearded and mulleted glory, it was his second tour, but his first with a band.) It was, as we said, a “mission,” sponsored by Youth for Christ, so I was doubly eager to go: playing bass and doing the Lord’s work.

(The awkwardness of present-me looking back on Christian-me will, I’m sure, be a recurring theme over the next year or so as The Reign continues to record old music.)

So I bought a Fender Precision Bass, a Gallien-Krueger amp, and a 15″ speaker with an enormous cabinet. I spent a few weeks learning Sting’s bass on The Police’s Synchronicity album, and then sold almost everything I owned and moved out to Minnesota for rehearsal.

Most of the songs were Dan’s; it was the Dan H Band, after all. But we did a couple of my tunes, and we wrote at least a couple more as a band. If I remember correctly, one of those songs was “Where You Are.”

I don’t have a recording from the Netherlands, but I do have a boombox recording of a performance I put together a couple years later, which included “Where You Are.” Musically — that is, aside from melody and lyrics — it’s the same song: same guitar parts, same bass line, same song structure.

At some point, I must have decided that the melody was too simple and repetitive, especially since the music vamps from D to E throughout the whole damn tune. Further, the lyrics, especially in the chorus, were a bit on the nose, as well. (I can’t remember who’s responsible for what: the melody feels like Dan, but a good chunk of the lyrics feel like me….)

Anyway, I have no recollection of this, but I reworked the lyrics and melody completely. Indeed, only the words “I don’t know” survived. Everything else — call-and-response verses with lots of rapid fire words and the chorus’s countermelodies — is new.

The Liner Notes

Here are the lyrics, if you’re interested.

Music by The Reign and Dan Huisinga; lyrics by The Reign.

• Greg Kemble: Lead vocals, guitars, bass
• Harold Bloemendaal, Jr.: Lead vocals
• Doug Lada: Drums, vocals
• Travis Sheets: Keys, vocals
• Curtis Holtzen: original bass
• Dave Hackbarth: recording engineer
• Marc DeSisto: mixing engineer

A note on the bass: as I mentioned in another post, some parts were lost or damaged in the transfer from analog 24-track tape to digital. The bass in this song was one of the casualties: somehow, the process made it warble and dragged it out of tune — a shame, since nothing sounds as good as Curtis’s Rickenbacker did…. Anyway, since I have recording gear, I cranked out the replacement.

Top A.I. image by, I presume, Doug Lada.

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Better Late than Neverland is available on vinyl, CD, and digital download through The Reign Store. It’s also available for purchase digitally through Amazon and iTunes (through Apple Music).

The album and individual songs are available to stream on YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other streaming services. (You can find them on YouTube, too, but if you’re not a Premium subscriber, it will serve you ads….)

lyrics and Liner Notes

(I’ll update this list as I complete blog posts…)

Side One	Side Two
Strip: Lyrics  — Liner Notes Long Shadow: Lyrics — Liner Notes	Wall St. Wisdom: Lyrics — Liner Notes