in early 2003, rick ippolitio left the band. this, combined with a serious bout of cns lyme disease to tom walker, lead to the band's break-up. tom walker began work on a solo album, "in a word", in late 2003. in late 2005, walker revived the friday's child trademark and a new version of "in a word" with rich haddad, rob grosso, and walker's long-time mentor don regan. on july 30, 2005 friday's child performed a cd release concert at luna stage in montclair, nj. the concert was recorded on audio and video in a joint venture by dragon rider productions and walker's honeybee music, produced by brian jude and tom walker, and directed by brian jude. rich haddad produced the audio, and the video was edited by steve maio. the initial concept for the production was a dvd/cd called "friday's child: live at luna stage." after a handful of tracks were mixed and edited, they were released as "teasers" on the internet. the overwhelming response from fans made it clear that the future of the band was to turn to broadband media in order to spread their music and attract new listeners. while more videos were edited, the dvd was never released, and friday's child instead released the audio recordings as a studio/live album in 2007 "secretly" named "democracy," because of the ever-present t-shirt worn by don regan which read, "got democracy?" (parodying the "got milk?" advertisement campaign). the cd contained the live recordings combined with select re-mixed tracks from "in a word", as well as a video of the song "the chasing game." an interactive section of the cd also promoted the web sites for friday's child, dragon rider productions, a handful of sponsors and friends, as well as a new outlet for friday's child.