A few years ago we were contacted through our website by Enrique Martinez Celaya an LA based artist. He mentioned in his email that he was a fan of the band and often played our music in his studio while he was working. He found it inspiring. He had this crazy idea of inviting Margo to LA to sing “Mining For Gold” at the opening of one of his upcoming exhibitions. We love this type of odd opportunity; so Margo accepted and flew off to LA into the arms of the unknown.

As it turned out, Margo had a wonderful experience and discovered that Enrique is not only a world renowned multi-disciplinary artist, but is also an amazing human being.  At the time, he broached the idea to Margo of doing a book together.

When the band passed through LA several months later, Enrique came out to the show and afterward he again brought up the idea of working on a book together. So over the next few months, when our schedules allowed, he and I talked about what form this book would take. As we approached our 20th anniversary, Enrique came up with the idea of focusing the book on “inspiration and creation”. He had a very specific idea for the layout which would set up a journey for the reader, starting with an introduction, leading to photos gathered from our personal archives that documented the places where our songs were written and recorded, then moving to hand written drafts of the lyrics in their earliest stage of development and then finally to the finished lyrics with each song being accompanied by a watercolour created by Enrique and inspired by the specific song: one art-form inspiring another, just like it’s suppose to be.

The process has been a wonderful adventure and working with Enrique a pure pleasure. He is a true artist. A very inspiring individual. The book is something that I and the band are extremely proud of and we feel honoured to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Enrique. (If you are interested in finding out more about Enrique’s work, check out his website: http://www.martinezcelaya.com).

The book itself is a thing of beauty. It is a hard-covered, oversized 9 x 8 inch book with an acetate dust-jacket and a tip-on photo (a paste up photo); 148 pages with 87 colour illustrations.

We hope you enjoy the experience as much as we have.

Michael Timmins