Sometimes intimacy requires a little distance, a professional's guidance, and maybe some bubble wrap.

Archie Cavanaugh says years of affectionate words found new depth and permanence in the ears of a producer far away in the Lower 48, who turned mailed recordings of love songs into Cavanaugh's first album in 27 years.

The project also brought the Juneau singer closer to his wife, who helped complete many of Cavanaugh's long-ignored works.

"The magic between Melinda and I was really renewed," he said. "It was like Paul McCartney and John Lennon coming together."

A release party for the smooth-jazz, light-rock album, "Love Birds," will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25 at the Vocational Training And Resource Center at 3239 Hospital Drive. The party coincides with Cavanaugh's 57th birthday. Samples of all the songs, plus those from his debut "Black and White Raven" album, can be heard at his Web site, www.archiecavanaugh.com.

Cavanaugh said he recorded most of the vocals for "Love Birds" in Alaska, using a track recorded by a drummer to help keep proper time. Cavanaugh then sent the tracks to producer Jeff Tassin, a three-time Emmy Award winner living in Manchester, Wash. Tassin, playing several instruments and using other musicians he gigs with regularly, helped bring the vocals to life and exceeded all expectations, Cavanaugh said.

"He took these songs, and he just orchestrates them to the point where you say, 'My God, this sounds like a whole live band from the samples he had,'" he said.

"One song that really strikes me is the first song on the album, 'It's Been a Long Time.' Once you listen to that, it just strikes you as a Chicago horn section playing the horn parts. What it's playing is a swing rhythm ... that was his addition."

Tassin said Cavanaugh was more than an observer on that and other songs, singing suggested parts of instrumentation at times, some of which worked unexpectedly well despite the producer's doubts.

"He rides the emotion and the timing of the songs really well, and it's easy to read his tunes from that," Tassin said. "Not everyone is suited for that (long-distance work)."

Cavanaugh and his wife did make a couple of trips to Tassin's studio to fine-tune ideas and rerecord some vocal parts. One of the best parts of working with Tassin, Cavanaugh said, was the producer's lack of ego despite his previous composing awards for TV scores and other works.

"When I recorded my first album with Redbone, I had a hell of a time keeping them from injecting their Redbone sound into the material I had wrote," Cavanaugh said.

Cavanaugh, a lifelong Southeast Alaska resident, talks extensively about his Tlingit heritage. Among the musicians Cavanaugh has played with is Jim Pepper, probably the world's most acclaimed Native saxophonist, who came to Juneau to contribute to "Black and White Raven."

Cavanaugh writes almost exclusively about his roots when describing his new album on his Web site. The site explains that the album's title refers to how only persons of opposite clans (for example Eagles and Ravens) were permitted to marry. He also writes that he carved a traditional Tlingit box design with a raven, eagle and a human face, which serves as "Love Birds'" cover art.

The music on "Love Birds," however, has no Tlingit elements. Instead, it's a return to a different set of roots, Cavanaugh's early days of playing music while growing up in Kake.

"My theory in writing music is to always write a hit song," he said. "I know musicians have always told me before I shouldn't do that - I should write music with the idea of it being enjoyable.

"But I grew up in honky-tonk halls playing music that had to be fun to all ages. We couldn't just play rock-and-roll Rolling Stones and the Beatles."