Matt Wessel Music

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COME RUN WITH ME
(1999)

Mystic Waters
Battle Never Won
Come Run With Me
Matt's Prelude Mvt. II
Saga
Love Will Find A Way
Mary's Song
We Are The Presence Of God
That's When I'll Be
Saga (piano only)
Let Us Recall
Lover's Serenade
Lord's Prayer
Behold The Lamb Of God
Farewell

TRACK LIST

CD INFO

recorded at st. paul the apostle church, gurnee, IL
recording engineer: larry pajakowski

released in november, 1999

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When it finally came time to decide what I wanted to do for the cover of "Come Run With Me", there were two things I knew I was sure of. The first is that I wanted the picture on the cover to be a recent one of me. The cover to "Pure Inspirations" featured a picture of me at the age of five or six. I wanted my second CD - an album that I knew would reach a wider audience of people who may not know who I was - to feature a current picture of me.

I was also sure that I wanted it to be a "nature scene". I love nature. I love pictures of forests, oceans, mountains, etc. Anything that shows the awesome beauty usually appeals to me. Also, the title of the CD had to do partly with my passion for running. And since I was used to running in very scenic, natural places, I wanted the cover photo to reflect that.

Other than knowing those two things, I didn’t really have a concept of where I wanted the shoot to take place or how.

After much deliberation, I decided to have some picture taken of me down by Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. There’s a giant park right on the lake that my friends and I like to call the “Milwaukee Commons” (it’s a large expanse of grass and trees – very similar to the “Boston Commons”). From Marquette, it’s only a five-minute car ride to get down there. From where I currently live, it’s about a one-minute walk. I thought it would be the perfect place to take a picture of me in a wide-open, tree-filled setting.

I asked my uncle, Dave, who I knew liked to take pictures as a hobby, to help me out with the shoot. He picked me up one afternoon during the week (I remember it being during a two-hour stretch I had in between classes) and we headed down to the “Milwaukee Commons”.

Once we got there, we looked around for a perfect spot. We found a lone rock sitting in the middle of the park and decided that it was worth taking some shots there (by the way, to this day I still have all of the pictures from this shoot that I didn’t use in the album). We took a series of shots with me sitting on a rock, looking in various directions. After a few shots, we decided to take some others, just to be safe. And I’m glad we did, because the rock pictures were kind of weird. And since Dave and I were both novices in our respective hobbies (music and photography), we didn’t have the best technology. Dave’s camera didn’t allow for on-site previewing of pictures, and I really didn’t know what I was doing anyways…

After a few wide shots with me standing near some trees, we decided to take some close-up shots of me with the trees in the background a little blurred. As you can see, this is the final concept that we went with. Dave’s artistic eye convinced him that it would look best if I were just a bit off-center with the colorful cluster of trees to me right. If I could do the shoot over, I would probably smile a little more. But I do genuinely like this cover shot.

We also decided to take a picture of me leaning against a tree, with a more “serious” look on my face. For those who own the album, you know that the picture on the CD itself is from this set of shots. It’s a close up of me leaning against a tree with my arms crossed with a “yeah-I-heard-what-you-said” sort of look on my face. At first, I decided to use this picture for the cover of the album, and to use what ended up as the cover on the CD. But when I got the proofs back from the CD place, I decided that the picture of me leaning against a tree was just a little too “angry”. So I switched them. Thank goodness I did…

Owners of “Come Run With Me” will also notice that there are two other sets of pictures in the CD (I’ll try to scan these soon and put them on the site). One is of a set of shoes on the back cover. I was trying to go with the “running” theme. So what did I do? I took a pair of shoes that I had just purchased (so they were really, really white) and threw them on top of the basketball court in my family’s backyard. Then I took some pictures with a disposable camera.

Very high-tech.

The photo that appears in the CD’s insert is one that the Disc Makers provided for me. I asked them to put a nature scene in the space with a runner running in the distance. They couldn’t find one with a runner, so they just used one with a few sporadic trees in an open field.

It works.

So there you have it. That’s how the photos for my second album, “Come Run With Me”, came to be.

BEHIND THE COVER