Five For Fighting, Message For Albert was the debut CD from singer / songwriter John Ondrasik. I came to work with John while I was living on the West coast, when ESP Management (Foreigner, Megadeth, Bad Company) called to say they had been working with him and weren't sure what direction to take him but thought I might know. For the first time in a very long time, someone didn't tell me their life story or why whatever recording I was about to hear didn't quite sound like it should. He just sat down at the piano and started playing and singing. I knew then he had the goods.
We started working together, co-writing and recording eight track demos. After a couple of years of this, we built up a strong batch of songs and decided to go in and make a proper CD with full production. When we were done, I started asking my industry contacts where I should go with it. Eventually, I was led to Carla Berkowitz (now Carla Ondrasik) of EMI Publishing. I sent her our demo and told her John and I were performing at a little coffee house on Melrose and would she come check it out. Well, it turns out she fell for more than just John's music. She signed him to a publishing deal with EMI and connected the dots to a record deal with EMI North America. She also fell in love with him and they got married.
I co-produced the record with EMI's president, Davitt Sigerson. We recorded it between New York and L.A. The CD came out in 1996 and EMI folded two months after that so it never really had a chance to get its wings. But it was the beginning of John's career and he went on to pen the hit song, Superman (It Ain't Easy) and got signed to Aware / Columbia, where he now resides and has released three CDs for them, each of which has yielded him a hit song.
Recording again in New York after many years gone was so refreshing and rekindled my love for this great city. It was no longer the sleazy Dinkens-era nightmare I fled in the mid eighties for sunny Southern California and I moved back the year after the Five For Fighting project to start my own group, Fire Ants, and a new life back where it all began for me.
