Excerpted from Patrick Lalley's liner notes to "That Was The Future, This Is The Past"

Few of us have a record of our life, of our purpose, our art. That’s probably because we aren’t willing to look at it. Not really. We don’t turn our lives over and over like a spectacular jewel; examine it from all directions, in different light and circumstance. We don’t go back again, and again, and try to explain it to ourselves. Most of us just don’t think about it that hard. Rich Show does. Music has no answers and songwriters aren’t prophets or shamans. But good songs are stories, reflecting the writer’s vision, translated into melody and rhythm. Guitar, bass, drums. The classic rock n’ roll formula endures as a classic American art form. Rich took these tools of music, the craft of storytelling and turned his memories into jewels. He took his observations of life in a small Midwestern city and honed them until they shined. He got up every day and went to work, and raised kids, and struggled with himself. All the while, for all the years, he examined his life, turned it over, tried to figure it out and then interpret it for us … There has never been a record like this for a South Dakota artist, and there likely never will be again. Rich has the history of the city, the dedication to the craft of storytelling, of setting it to music, colored by the people and culture of where he lives. What we hear in this record is the progress of a life of wonder, and hope, but grounded in the absolute reality of life. Because real life gives us very little, unless you’re willing to turn it over and over and find the hidden gems between the edges.”