By buying direct with no middlemen involved, this CD can be offered for the lower price $12. To have the "It's Time" CD sent to you, include a check or money order for $12, along with your own mailing address, and send it to:

Gene Perry
195 Spruce Street
St. Ignace, MI 49781

This album can also be purchased at the St. Ignace Book World book store for $15.

This album and all it's songs, as written and performed, are copyrighted.

NEWS OF NOTE: The songs The Old Highway and December (the only ones entered in the contest) were recognized in VH1's Song Of The Year nation-wide contest amongst thousands of entries as a "Suggested Artist" for January 2005!

The Old Highway   

"This song probably contains my best songwriting. For the sheer number of literary elements used here, like imagery (1940's Route 66 America), metaphors, alliteration, symbolism, surrealism and the more-challenging ABAB rhyming pattern, it would be the kind of song for which an English teacher would probably give a good grade. All that along with the interesting guitar chords and riffs make it seem like too much, but it just clicks and comes off so simple, which is a triumph. It’s a song about the costs of chasing money throughout life, then coming to regret that choice and trying to turn back. I'm just busting-out proud of the song; Now the trick is to write fifty more just like it!"

Let's Dance   

"My Mellencamp influence shows a lot on this one. It contains mandolins, accordions and fiddles, yet it rocks, in kind of a Cajun zydeco way. Structurally, it's more simple than I would typically allow, with just three major chords going back and forth, but sometimes that's all you need. It's a very personal song about old friends. It’s loosely based on a slow dance I had with an old high school girlfriend at my 20th year reunion. The only other musician on this album is on this song, a fiddle player and good friend of mine, Jeff Guenther, who just puts this song over the top! (Thanks, Jeff!)"

The Hero Inside

"This is an unabashed power ballad, most likely the result of hearing too much Foreigner and Journey in the 80's. It's a beautiful song about a kid that is interested in a girl, but he hasn’t lived enough life or accomplished enough things yet to have any self confidence. Your confidence and identity are defined by your successes, but when you're young you don't have very many of those. You're not in a very good position to impress anyone at that time, even though you'd really like to. This kind of irony makes for good songwriting fodder. I tried my hand at piano here and climaxed the song with a wailing electric guitar solo (which I’m glad I could still do decently since playing mainly acoustic for so long)."

My Name

"A family name is passed on at birth, and should mean something. Men, especially, are expected to do something with their lives so that their name has value when it’s passed on. The idea that a name is given to you to either build up or ruin was fascinating, and I thought deserving of a song. I have an affinity for American history, which shows in this song that talks of our immigrant forefathers and pioneers. (The concertina, or 'squeezebox’, in the song helps with the imagery to 'see’ the immigrant ship coming to America.) The main guitar riff is very catchy, too."

Playing The Field

"This is a mainstream pop country song all the way, that just kind of slipped out, which is ironic, since I don’t much care for where most country music radio is right now. This song probably has the best chance of being a hit single, though. It’s about that time in your life when you are expected to be dating around, but then meeting that life-long special person a bit sooner than you had planned. The barroom setting makes it a honky-tonk song, which is fun writing. Many people have told me it’s their favorite song on the album."

Love And Freedom

"When I was first learning to write songs, I tuned into a country radio station regularly for a few months to see what was going on in that particular genre. I observed that most of those songs were either about love or freedom. Instead of trying to mimic those, I offer that you often have to give up some of one to have some of the other. I thought the idea that you can't entirely have your cake and eat it too was vastly more interesting. What came out was a very different take on the topics I never heard anyone say before, which is hard to do in songwriting. I'm proud of that uniqueness, and I'm glad I didn't end up making another tired song about one or the other. After all, the world has enough of those."

You Make Me Better

"I’m probably not the first to observe that people in long, true love relationships just seem like better people in general, being more optimistic, happy, successful, healthy and so on. It’s both funny and beautiful how men and women are so different yet just go so well together. This song is inspired by my relationship with my wife. I cover her shortcomings and she covers mine, and we both offer each other our strengths. The song just soars with a climactic orchestral strings outro, which I hope chills your spine like it does mine."

The Exception To The Rule   

"This is a rockin’ but angry song about my experience with contributing 4% of my income to my 401k plan for three years but it staying put in value. In my mind, that money must have went somewhere, and it was written at about the time of all the Enron and insider trading scandals, so a conclusion was kind of presenting itself. It steams me about the very rich dishonestly getting hyper-rich with hard-working peoples' retirement savings. It’s an angry song being sung by a despicable character in first person, both of which songwriting 'experts' say to avoid. Yep, the song has no market potential and breaks rules like crazy, which is probably why it feels so good! I do like that I get to shred on another electric guitar solo, here."

Statue In The Park

"The events of September 11 affected us all, and it sure made me do a lot of thinking. I wrote this song about Memorial Day. Where I live, this holiday means the start of the tourist season, and to most it just means another day off work, but I’m certain that neither was it’s original intent. I saw some pictures in the paper of a local service held near a statue of a soldier. The service’s proud old veterans and otherwise sparse attendance moved me to write the song. It's sad and sweet with mandolins and a lonely, Taps-like trumpet solo, which was just perfect. I think Memorial Day needed a 'carol'."

Sally McGuiver

"I wanted to try my hand at writing a colorful character song, much like what Harry Chapin, Billy Joel or Jim Croce used to do in the 70' s. This is based on a story I saw a TV news magazine show do about a housewife and mother of three who did dirt-track racing as a hobby. The sweet little mom amongst the flying dirt, engines and loudness definitely had irony going for it (which is probably my favorite literary element). I usually use the profound kind of irony rather than the humorous kind, but I chose the latter here and it was a lot of fun. It’s an acoustic blues southern rocker. Slide electric guitars have always sounded like dragsters to me, so they just had to be added to this song."

December   

"Embarrassing to say, but I actually got a bit teary when I wrote this. That’s a pretty good sign that there’s something emotionally powerful going on, to be sure. It has imagery of a beautiful Up North winter night, but it’s deeply inward as well. The guitar is very pretty, and it has one of those choruses that just can’t be repeated enough times. Flat out, I think it is my favorite song on the album."