"Songs, songs, songs, songs."

That was Mike Gordon's mantra as he worked on The Green Sparrow, the former Phish bassist's vibrant new solo album. Its ten songs are succinct and accessible, but they're also the unmistakable creations of Gordon's playfully idiosyncratic musical mind.

A rewarding year and a half of work went into The Green Sparrow. Gordon's creative journey found him delving deeply into songwriting, trying his hand at keyboards and other instruments, and experimenting with different programming and production techniques. His efforts yielded a bumper crop of songs. He winnowed down sixty of them to seventeen contenders for inclusion on The Green Sparrow. In economical, Weezer-like fashion, he kept cutting until he had ten that sounded like they were born to be together. "One of my goals was to have an up-sounding bunch of music," Gordon says. "I wanted the music to be sophisticated yet accessible. I also wanted the lyrics to be personally meaningful, to make sure I was getting out what was in my heart."

The Green Sparrow opens with "Another Door," a rhythmically sinuous groover whose lyrics herald a creative rebirth. It was partly inspired by Gordon's evolving emotions in the aftermath of Phish's disbanding in 2004. "The breakup was pretty traumatic at first," he admits. "But then it got to be an exciting time soon after, because I learned that choosing a particular door opens up all these other doorways. That's what the song is about."

Gordon accepted offers of work after Phish but came up with a notion that suited him better. "All these people were calling me up to play bass," he says, "but I decided to work on songwriting and hire myself as bass player."

The theme of The Green Sparrow is "running and jumping," says Gordon. "I was like, 'Now I'm going to take the ball and run with it.' Lyrically, I wanted this excited feeling of flying through the air to come through." The album title was plucked from the lyrics to "Morphing Again": "She leapt like a frog but got caught by the green sparrow." Gordon personally created the colorful cover image of a bird with its eyes wide open.

"Andelmans' Yard" is one of the album's key songs, based on a recurring dream that harks back to outdoor explorations in his childhood years. "I lived in a tucked-away rural neighborhood that was like a fairyland," Gordon recalls. Appropriately for such a personal song, he played all the instruments, working every weekday over two months.

Elsewhere, Gordon recruited other musicians. Ivan Neville (The Neville Brothers) lends his vocals and organ chops to "Jaded" and "Traveled Too Far" includes former Phish-mates Trey Anastasio on guitar and Page McConnell on keyboard and organ, as well as drummer Bill Kreutzmann (Grateful Dead), pianist Chuck Leavell (Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers Band), frequent Gordon collaborator guitarist Scott Murawski and percussionist extraordinaire Ken Lovelett. Anastasio's brief but burning solo on "Traveled Too Far" hints at the song's potential as an improvisational

vehicle, but Gordon was careful -- here and elsewhere -- to focus on the song and save the jamming for the stage.

ven so, when Gordon switched to a considerably zippier pace of trying to compose a song a day with engineer/collaborator Jared Slomoff, many of the songs' basic DNA originated as excerpts from bass-and-drum jams Gordon conducted with such drummers as New Orleans phenom Doug Belote and Joe Russo (from The Benevento/Russo Duo). "For years I'd been wanting to do stream-of-consciousness improvising and use the resulting jams to write songs and music," Gordon explains. "Interesting patterns come out when you're not thinking about it."

"Radar Blip" is one such product of that methodology. Superficially, the subject is running - one of the fitness-minded Gordon's favorite activities -- but on a deeper level the lyrics are about spontaneously letting your feet (and your mind) wander wherever they wish in order to tap into subconscious creativity. "If I'm willing to make unplanned left and right turns as a runner, then I'll be more likely to take adventurous left and right turns while I'm playing music, too," Gordon explains. "That's exactly what 'Radar Blip' is about."

In addition to his extensive catalog with Phish, Gordon has made two albums with guitarist Leo Kottke (Clone, Sixty Six Steps) and issued the solo album Inside In - an introspective, experimental audio adjunct to his film Outside Out -- in 2003. "If Inside In was a headphones album, then The Green Sparrow is one that I'd like people to crank at a party," Gordon says with a chuckle.

Gordon worked mainly at his home studio in Vermont, but also forayed to New York's Electric Lady Studios for additional recording and Trey Anastasio's rural Vermont studio, The Barn, for mixing.

The Green Sparrow is ultimately about letting go and taking wing. "First I had to let go of Phish," says Gordon. "Then I let go of the idea of playing with other people, because I wanted to work alone for a year. Then I came up with all these great songs but let go of some of them for the sake of the album."

"Some people might see me as introspective, but this time I wanted to put out something fun. The Green Sparrow has cheerfulness and a certain amount of smile to it. If that's what people get from the album, then I'll be happy."