About a year ago, I started to conceive a project of recording twelve instrumentals I wrote for a CD. The tunes are a collection of songs written on the mandolin. Six are Irish in nature. Two tunes are gypsy style in Dm, two are bluegrass fiddle tunes and the final two are waltzes. As the title implies, the inspiration for the music came primarily from 'journeys' in three geographic locations: Ireland, Corsica and the southern United States. I have found that my environment along with life experiences stimulates my best writing. When in a stimulating situation or location, I just find tunes in my mandolin. The tune 'Mary's Last Waltz' was found in my mandolin after my last visit with my mother before she died. I had the honor of playing that tune with my cousin at my mother's funeral. The tune will be forever linked with my mother's memory and have a special place in my heart. Gretchen's very emotional fiddle lead always makes me tear up. I feel in my heart that my mother would be honored by the tune. At first, we were going to record the tunes by four of my friends playing the tunes live as a group. The result was...not very good, mostly due to my lack of vision. At the advice of a number of people, we realized that we would do much better recording each artist individually. We also started working on setting up a studio in my home. We made a strong effort to provide a comfortable friendly atmosphere for the recording process with the belief that being comfortable results in music from the heart. You have probably noticed that I in the dialogue I switched from I to we. There are three people that need to be recognized. My friend, engineer, and co-producer, Brian Kelly, has provided artist vision that has put together huge number of takes and make it an artistic whole. Another friend and co-producer, Bob Nobles, besides playing bass and rhythm guitar on the project, has provided great a great ear and advice on all aspects of this project. Another friend, Jordan Bates, is the organizational glue that has held the business side of the project together. We also reached out to a number of artists who agreed to work on this project. I am so humbled that such talented and wonderful artists spent time sharing their incredible vision and talent to the project. Now to introduce the musicians: On fiddle, the incomparable Gretchen Priest-May; on lead guitar, Stan Lawrence; on woodwinds Dave Boisvert, on bass and rhythm guitar, Bob Nobles and on mandolin, Tony Huber. I cannot say enough about the wonderful job these musician did both in preparation and in the studio. Their music as you will hear speaks for itself.
