In the spring of 2014, I suddenly had the opportunity to work with Emma Mario in Paris, and we agreed to make a solo covers album, which became I'm Willing. In the run-up to making the record, I made a number of demos trying out different songs I wanted to cover. Many of these ideas ended up having to be discarded. However, when 7e.p. began releasing my music in Japan in 2016, bonus tracks were requested, and many of the demos made it into the Japanese versions of my albums. These demos in turn were collected and sequenced by Tin Angel for the cassette-only release Bedazzled Bedraggled in 2017, intended as a companion album to Anchors. The songs originally recorded as demos for I'm Willing were Being Alive, That's What You Say (Everytime You're Near Me), If You Never Say Goodbye and Send In The Clowns. Wild is the Wind and Love Ballad were recorded by Emma Mario as part of the I'm Willing session in Paris, as was Feelin' Mellow, which was nearly included on the record. Get It Up For Love and Chimes of Freedom were recorded in Toronto with Jay Anderson and Matt McLaren during the sessions for Anchors and Ampersands. Hotline Bling was recorded at home at the end of 2015, simply because a friend had suggested I cover it, and I had been a longtime admirer of the Timmy Thomas song (Why Can't We Live Together?) on which the backing track is based.

My predisposition for music of the 60s and 70s is obvious to anyone who has heard my music. What I tried to do with I'm Willing was make a minimalist tribute to the era - the idea being not so much to make an audio-verite recording of solo performance, but to do something a bit more elaborate, with multi-part harmonies and a few piano overdubs. The demos recorded at home represent an important first step towards that aesthetic approach. The two Sondheim covers provided a glimpse of the kinds of emotions I wanted the record to evoke, even though in the end I decided not to use them. Bacharach has likewise also been a longtime influence, so the attempt at doing one of his final songs with Hal David and Dionne Warwick (If You Never Say Goodbye, from the 1972 Dionne record) seemed appropriate. Gloria Scott's wonderfully mordant That's What You Say had been haunting me since first hearing it on a French compilation, The Smoocher is Back, in 1997. The beguiling chord changes in Weldon Irvine's Feelin' Mellow had likewise cast a spell over me from the first time I heard it in the late nineties.

I first heard Wild is the Wind on David Bowie's record Station to Station as a teenager, and for years I thought that he wrote it - it wasn't until much later that I heard Nina Simone's version, and years after that before I finally saw the 1957 George Cukor film starring Anna Magnani for which it was originally written (the first recorded version having been done by Johnny Mathis). The song Love Ballad, made famous by George Benson in 1979, was initially recorded by L.T.D. in 1976 in a more subdued version produced by my longtime heroes Larry and Fonce Mizell.

Of the two songs recorded with Zack G, Jay Anderson and Matt McLaren in Toronto, Ned Doheny's Get It Up For Love was the more elaborate - it was made as a calling card when it looked like we might have a chance to become Mr. Doheny's backing band - alas, it never came to pass. Chimes of Freedom, inspired more by the haunting Byrds version of the song than the plainer Bob Dylan original, was recorded for but then discarded from Anchors and Ampersands.

Hotline Bling, the only 21st Century song in the bunch, has its roots in the 70s as well, with the aforementioned Timmy Thomas connection. I listened closely to both the Drake and the Erykah Badu versions of the song while writing my arrangement.

-Chris A. Cummings, April 2024