Three years ago, I started writing my third solo album, "I Love You". The idea was fully formed before I wrote a single note or lyric: I wanted to create a set of songs based on three elements - piano, voice, and string arrangements. The central lyrical theme was to celebrate and immortalize in song the places that have had the greatest impact on me; I am very affected by place, by where I am, and consequently travelling has always lit up a part of my brain that nothing else ever could. Crossing the Atlantic for the first time in 2013 and arriving in Istanbul was an especially impactful event, touching down in a place so utterly different from anything I had experienced. The album mirrors this journey from one side of the Atlantic to the other across its two halves, from new world to old, from familiar shores to new and strange and exciting.

It took a long time to find the right collaborators to help bring these ideas to fruition, and I am so thankful to have my sibling Finn Letourneau contribute brilliant string arrangements, which they also entirely recorded and engineered themselves. I am also indebted to the many talents of my incredible friend Andrew Halliwell, who played drums, synths and sang on a few numbers, and gave me a vote of confidence and a set of trusted ears during mixing. And more - my wife Jordan singing on a few tracks and taking photos, my best friend Jesse singing and playing some guitar. Joanne Dzierza adding some backing vocals, Gabriel Pinchbeck assisting with the string arrangement on "Hamburg". And the brilliant Elisa Paengsang at CPS Mastering taking the whole thing to the finish line with finesse. Thank you, all of you, I love you.

A few additional notes. It took me three years to make this record, and in the case of a number of songs here, I kept some original vocals recorded when the song was first created, and recorded overdubs (a first for me), creating a sort of dialogue with my past and current self. In the same vein, "Nanaimo" was the first melody I ever composed, when I was 5 or 6, on piano. It emerged somewhere from the back of my brain to find its place as the somber backing track to the song about my hometown (inevitably a conflicted place to write about!). Finally, after wrestling with how to finish the record, I found an instrumental recording I had made as a sort of a "send off" to the acoustic piano I owned for a while, and had to say goodbye to before moving overseas. Andrew convinced me to write some lyrics to accompany the melody (one of my favorites I've written). The closing piano notes ring true, soft, satisfied: I love you.