This album was initally conceived as a compilation of some of the original music Johnno Lattin made and played with friends Brett O'Donnell (drums) and Naomi Cain (violin) over the years 2016 to 2021. However along the way we picked up some amazing creative friends, Tarntanya musicians Jo Zealand, Matt Harris, Vikram Kumar, Gail Buckby, all brought their incredible talents to the tasks of producing a lively album before Johnno became a half-centurion.

The name 'Blackpenny' arrived one morning in May 2016 in a fuzzy dream along with a messy idea for a logo, when a band name was needed our frst gig, for Sydney writer Bob Blunt's launch of his book 'The Year My Hair Fell out'. This album covers some of the period of start of the band Blackpenny when Penny McBride (trumpet) and Nick Ketley (saxophone, bass) played at Bob's gig before leaving Adelaide forever.

'Wrong Go Right' (track 2) is a live recording including Penny and Nick, and US interloper Bob O'Dair from a rehearsal at Naomi and Karl's house. Penny & Nick then departed Adelaide for Sydney, where they recorded some of their parts at Tim Kevin's Tempe River Studio - which were used in the recording of 'Singer Songwriter' (track 6).

The next year Johnno and Brett had a two-piece gig at the Gov, Naomi & Karl Larsen (designer, musician, sound engineer) were overseas in Cuba, and the decision (based on youngfolk's waterfalling marketing strategy in which every gig is a single launch - because they don't need to actually print a physical single) - was that no gig could be anything without a release and Brett pointed to Johnno's hard disk recorder (which he bought in Brighton UK in 2005 and contains many song sketches) and said 'we should release something from that beast' which become the basis of the song 'Belly of the Beast' (track 7) which was released as the title track of the 2017 Belly of the Beast EP. Unlike the youth, however we printed a CD hand crafted at home.

2017 was the same year a government workplace restructure was announced impelling Johnno into a stressful midlife career change which took the next 4 years - track 1 'Don't Tell people Your Dreams' is the learnings of that story.

'Heart Breaks Itself' was written 2018 informed by experiences of the extreme difficulties faced by people in dealing with Australia's social security system of the time in which people were systematically legally accused by automated income averaging algorithims of ripping the system off, these people were cut off from payments, bullied and humiliated. Some years later the entire shamefaced system was found to be illegal however not before many lives were lost, some people took their own lives, others died preventable deaths due to financial difficulties and distress.The system was a system later dubbed 'Robodebt' and is the subject of a Royal Commission in Australia which is ongoing in 2023. Mid-ranking and senior public servants were complicit in the system.

'Music Only Changes When We Want It To Change' is a song both older and younger than all of the other songs - the challenges of creating meaningful music whilst being overtaken by popular media is a familiar story to this band. Corruption in music is nothing new, but how much people want and enable it to be corrupt is a story nearly as old as songs. From claquers, shills, the story of Payola and onto the current monopolisation of humanity's music choices by multi bilionaires Spotify - the challenge of mapping out an ethical creative sonic media is one that remains with today's music listener, musicians and their families - to create and enable the flow of music reflecting our living dreams and dying wishes.