I want everyone within the sound of my keyboard to check out D.C. Anderson’s new CD “I Am Still.” I offer this recommendation with a warning: you may melt into a little puddle at the sound of his voice.

David (D.C.) tours the country with ‘The Phantom of the Opera.” That’s the day job. He’s been doing cabaret performances for years and years, bringing his unique blend of whimsy and heartache to the repertoire of Gershwin, et al and mixing in some folkier tunes. I met him when I subbed in as a guitarist for one of those shows twenty odd (and they’ve been odd) years ago.

We’ve collaborated ever since. When I reformed The Foremen in the early '90s, David was my Glen Yarbrough. It was at a D.C. Anderson show in ‘91 that I first sang “Saddam Shame.” Gulf War I has just ended and the ink was still wet on verse seven, and it’s D.C. you can hear laughing on the recording of that song from that night that appears of The Foremen’s first record “Folk Heroes.”

He began brandishing his own lyrics about ten years ago, and I’ve had the pleasure of setting some of them to music. Three such songs appear on “I Am Still.” He’s able to do what many lyricists strive to do -- perfectly combine a theatrical sophistication with a singer-songwriter’s sensitivity. He’s after emotional truth, he tells intimate stories -- sometimes his own, sometimes not -- all with a beautiful sense of structure and style.

These lyrics put me in touch with my inner Laura Nyro or Burt Bacharach. Pop Art Songs. There’s no bin card for that at Tower, but you can find David’s records at LMLMusic.com.

He would tell you he’s a “Sad Man” but there’s so much joy and longing and hope that come through D.C. Anderson’s songs. “I’m a broken down motel,” begins the album, and the title tune “I Am Still.” But he is not still; through the death of his mother, the search for love, the interplay between memory and observation, D.C. Anderson is constantly moving.

I’m blessed to work with him as a writer, and to know him as a lovely human being. Hear for yourself.

Roy Zimmerman - www.royzimmerman.com