esteemed progeny (2025)

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1. The Longer You Love
2. Two for the Price of One
3. Life of Invention

Music and Lyrics written by Paul Heinz.

All Vocals and instruments by Paul Heinz, except the following:

Anthony Calderisi – lead guitar on tracks 1 and 2, some rhythm guitar on track 1
Tim Marin – all bass and guitar, track 3
Jessica Heinz – backup vocals on track 1

Cover art by Sarah Heinz based on a concept by PH.

Mixed by PH with helpful feedback from Phil Sumida.

Mastered by Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, Chicago, IL.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this project possible.

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By the end of 2024, I knew I wanted to get four songs off my plate: “Happy Ending,” which I completed in the spring, and then three songs from three different time periods that make up this EP, all of which celebrate my family in one form or another.

The earliest of these – “Two for the Price of One” – was written in 2010 as an accompaniment to a video montage for my daughters’ bat mitzvah that year. I recall composing part of this tune in the parking lot of a church in Elmhurst where my daughters were rehearsing a play, but beyond that, everything’s a little fuzzy! I wanted to celebrate the thrill of getting to raise two daughters at once, and hopefully captured the spirit of this journey. My only regret is that I didn’t personalize the lyrics to each individual, but instead sort of clumped them in as one unit. Unfair of me, I’m afraid. At this time, I had a rackmount Sans Amp for guitar, which provided the perfect tone for the rhythm guitar before the unit started giving me problems. Listening to this song a decade and a half later, I’m kind of impressed with all the interweaving and overlapping vocal parts toward the end of this song – not sure if I mapped this all out or if I just winged it. For lead guitar, I called up once again to Anthony Calderisi, one of those guys who comes through in the clutch, and his tasty outro really enhanced the bombast of the ending.

Four and a half years later, my son had his bar mitzvah, and once again I created a video montage for the occasion and an accompanying song. This time I did a better job of writing to the person. My son was constantly immersing himself in creating endeavors, from cubing, yo-yoing, woodworking, drumming, etc., and he was also a curious kid who hammered me with questions that I was unprepared or incapable of answering! He was also a big Rush fan, and I was to some extent able to tap into the compositional style of this band for my song, “Life of Invention.” Here’s the thing: it’s one thing to write like Rush, and another thing to play like Rush. Enter Tim Marin, who I played in a horn band with for three or four years starting in 2011. Tim is one of those geniuses who can do anything, and he came to the rescue for this song, which would not have come to fruition without him. Fantastic guitar and bass playing!

For the older tunes, I started relooking at these in 2024. Unfortunately, some of the softsynths I used back in 2010 and 2015 no longer existed (or I no longer had loaded on my computer), so I had to recreate the entire intro for “Two for the Price of One,” and I fixed a couple of errors and tuning issues that existed in the original recordings. I quickly learned that the voice I have today doesn’t sound the same as it did 15 years ago, nor can it hit the same notes, so any changes to my vocal parts would have to be discarded.

Finally, there’s “The Longer You Love,” a version of which I’d hoped to include on last year’s album, Pop and Circumstance, but it wasn’t ready. I actually ended up rewriting most of the song back in 2023, and then kind of chose the best of both versions and melded them together. Lyrically, the song celebrates long-term relationships in a general way, but today, as my wife and I are just days away from our 30th anniversary, it’s clear that the song is really a celebration of our journey together, just as The Palisades was nine years ago. For this song, I handled all the duties until I packed up some equipment and drove to Louisville to record my daughter Jessica on vocals in the summer of 2025, a painless process given her prowess on the pipes, and to top things off, Anthony Calderisi once again provided lead guitar duties, giving the song a necessary lift.

By the end of August, I was able to send the songs off to Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room in Chicago for mastering. He’s now done my last five projects, I think, and he does a wonderful job.

For years, I’d tried to come up with a title that would start with the letters EP, and after several lame iterations, settled on Esteemed Progeny, which nicely captures the spirit of the collection. Lastly, I had an album cover in mind that was inspired by the cover of Duran Duran’s 1988 release, Big Thing. I took a stab at it, sent it off to my daughter Sarah, and as usual, within a few hours it was done. As I’ve said before, it pays to have an artist in the family, not to mention fellow musicians.

My next project will be a long, painstaking one, if everything goes according to plan. Funny, that I’m choosing to embark on a painstaking journey, but it’s consistent with the title – Anxious Traveler. I hope to have this completed for a 2027 release.

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