Sundial Tree was written during four winter months in Austin, TX. Throughout my Midwest hiatus, I spent a lot of time alone with exotic plants thinking about my relationship with music and why I do what I do in most areas of living. Every problem I have ever had is a problem I have with time.

When I begin the writing process for any album, I pick an area of myself that I'd like to work on and I use music to explore it. For the album Sundial Tree I was looking for a solid and pragmatic experience. Pre-Echoes for the Postmodern (my last album) took the essence of my being for a loop and dropped it in a new place. This place was familiar and old. It was a side of my mind I always knew was there but couldn't comprehend until going through some distinct stages. To explain and explore this place (which I still don't comprehend completely - nor am I meant to), I turned to the cycles of time and the numbers behind nature. Greeks like Pythagoras saw music, mathematics, time, and philosophy as part of the same system.

I have always needed to work on my relationship with numbers and time. I became really excited about math once I knew of shapes and numbers within nature in a way I hadn't known before. The numbers behind music are natural laws that are pleasing to the ear even when musicians aren't explicitly aware of how it is happening. It is hard for me to believe in ideas so I believe in math. However, I still like to explore ideas in terms of levels and dimensions and words serve this purpose for now. If my dexterity develops I hope to do it with sound.

Once returned to the Midwest in March 2010 I began recording the songs with Matt Olson at Ghost in My House Studio and later at Chez Shack Studio in Decorah, IA.