"Into The Light" actually started as an instrumental, several years ago. I had planned to name my first album Into The Light, and had planned to put the song as the last track on the album. Sometimes, things don't work out quite the way you expect them too.

One day, I pulled out the keyboard, determined to write a song on the keys. I recorded a little progression that I played for about three minutes. I went back and recorded some guitar rhythm on the track, and realized that I absolutely hated the sound from the crappy keyboard I had, so I scrapped the keyboard track. But I still liked the progression, so I decided to do some lead work over the rhythm track.

After working on it a while, and getting nowhere, I grabbed my Epiphone Les Paul that is signed by Dean Roland (rhythm guitarist for Collective Soul), and played the lead in one take. It was perfect...almost. There were several places where I messed up, but when I would try to fix them, I would always make it worse. So I left the song as it was, and called it "The Dean," to remind myself of which guitar the song was recorded with.

Well, I really liked the song as it was, but I wanted to put words to it. So, I rerecorded the rhythm tracks, and then I put down some lead (trying to stay as faithful to "The Dean" as possible, while using a different guitar). Once those tracks were down, I sat down to write the lyrics, listining to the music over and over until the lyrics came to me. And when they came, they came full force.

As soon as I wrote the first line, I knew the name of the song, and that the old instrumental "Into The Light" was history. It took me about ten minutes to write the lyrics to this song, because they came to me so fast. But for me, this is probably my favorite of all my songs. I love the positive message, in particular, because it allows me to reveal a portion of my spirituality without having to preach my beliefs, something that is hard to do these days.

And you know, I still have not written a song on the keyboard!