This new song is a relatively old song; it comes from Gary Marks’ unreleased album A Whisper Can Change The World, recorded in 2007. So, why unreleased? Gary Marks had started out on his singer-songwriter path in the 1970s, releasing four albums in that decade that became highly regarded in Europe and Japan when they received reissue prints on vinyl. He continued to tour, write new material and record, but the release of his next eight albums was all done independently. At the same time, he was pursuing long-form writing, producing more than twenty novels and novellas since 1988. Later, stepping back from touring, he took up piano teaching roles using improvisation theory to private students and at a number of different universities, and whilst doing all that, he also wrote two piano method books: The Gary Marks Piano Method I and II.
The passionate embrace of love that is the song Sky High is a single issued to complement Gary Marks’ latest album Crossroads, and he says of it, and the album that it came from, that “In 2007, I created my 8th album, A Whisper Can Change the World. Seven of the nine songs were mixed by the Grammy Award-winning mixing engineer, Jim Scott, at his studio in L.A. The album itself was written in a unique way. I wrote the title track after watching a strange clip on the news one night: A river in Ohio had caught fire. I was in disbelief. How could water catch fire?
But then my songwriting hit pause. I had three young children at home and my days became busy being a dad. Then one afternoon months later, while the kids were at school, I wrote a song called Anything. Every day after that, I wrote a song. That happened seven nights in a row. Suddenly, I had an album. I recorded it at my friend Bobby’s studio, which was about the size of twenty matchboxes. Jim Scott heard the tracks and agreed to mix the album. The problem was he was booked through the rest of the year. Amazingly, his next project with the band Matchbox Twenty was suddenly delayed for a few days because they were still tracking. Jim called and said he had only three free days. Take them, or I’d have to wait a year. So I flew to L.A., walked into his amazing studio, and had one of the most extraordinary musical experiences of my life.
Because of his brilliant work, and the work of Mark Needham, who mixed the last two songs on the album (Mark later mixed my album, “From Here”), this is one of my best-sounding albums.”
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