I had this idea for Youth In Asia as a kind of extended dramatic piece that would have Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry (the two fundamentalist missionary chicks from Waco who were being held prisoner by the Taliban in 2001) interacting with John Walker Lindh (the so-called American Taliban). I thought that though the three of them were being used at the time by the media as poster children for good v. evil, they were actually very much alike and equally screwed up. It still seems like fertile ground for a narrative that draws comparisons and engages in psycho-social speculation, but the music here doesn't accomplish any of what I started out to do. Conceptually, it's way undercooked, mostly because I got distracted by Waco and Richard Reid. But I still sort of like the songs, trite though they may be.

Neal Alger - guitar
Scott Anderson - guitar
Zach Brock - violin
Susan Cook - alto sax
Jill Dispenza - bassoon
John Elmquist - bass & piano & vocals
John Irabagon - alto sax
Layni Katz - vocals
John Kregor - guitar
Ingrid Krizan - cello
Brian Schwab - trumpet
Darren Scorza - drums
Michele Thomas - vocals
Andrea Tolzmann - violin
John Yao - trombone