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Gary's such a renowned expert at acoustic sound and how to find the tone of acoustic instruments. And that's what I was looking for—somebody who could get inside of a string quartet so you could hear the bow going on the string, or hear the person's fingers going up and down the fretboard—a more organic sound. We also miked my voice really close; I wanted to sound very immediate.

One press release quoted you as saying, "There's too little time for reflection in my life these days." I would've never guessed Fernando Ortega leads a fast-paced life. You strike me as a chill, laid-back type of guy.

Ortega [Laughs] I think I'm an anxious person. I lead a very active day. I'm not very organized. I move. I like to work. I like to do stuff. I like to clean the yard, work on the garden. Take walks. I can't just sit down for very long. I don't leave a lot of time for that. But I come across as very mellow in the way I impose myself. I would say that because of my disorganization and lack of discipline that I feel a little bit scattered all the time.

Does that spill into your spiritual life? Is it tough for you to "be still and know"?

Ortega It is, and it seems like it's gotten harder. It seems like it's gotten harder in the last few years, and I don't know why that is. That's one of the reasons I left Southern California. The pace was a little bit too fast for us. [My wife and I] moved to New Mexico in the last four months. So I've been looking to settle down, settle the pace of things down. So this record was kind of a response of how things were going.

We had been looking to move to Albuquerque for years and years. That's where my roots are. My family's all there. There's something about going back to where you have history. They don't have an ocean in New Mexico, but the sky is huge there. It's incredible.

Would you say it was loneliness or disconnectedness that prompted the move?

Ortega I don't think so. We had a great church and we were surrounded by friends that we've known for so long. We'd been in California for over 22 years. So we weren't lonely out there. It was definitely hard to leave our friends and to leave our church.

It's like the start of a new era for you.

Ortega Yeah, but especially for [my wife]. She's originally from Michigan, so this is not like going back to her roots or anything. So it was hard for her. But she loves it. She's really happy.

Some of your new material was also written in response to certain deaths in your family. Could you tell me about that?

Ortega I've lost some close relatives in the last two years. The album is dedicated to my aunts and a couple of friends. My aunt Lucy died—that funeral was really hard. I was alone there; my wife didn't get to go with me. And I spend a lot of time alone, reflecting on how death comes and how people grieve. And then a close friend of ours died in Pennsylvania—that was very sad but also really uplifting; it was one of the most beautiful services I've ever been to.

Originally, when I started writing these songs, I was trying to write something that would sound like a requiem mass, but not in the traditional sense—not a mass for the dead—but a mass for the bereaved, those who are mourning.

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