So long to a great friend
Tonight we had a going away dinner for our great friend, Elizabeth. Her job, the charity Food for the Hungry, is moving her to Nashville. I’ve known Lizzie for 10 years. We had an acoustic trio for several years, playing around the Columbus area and making some great music. Unfortunately, for some reason none of us can really explain, the trio kinda fizzled. Danny moved to Baltimore, we all got jobs and things just kinda moved on. I always long for the synergy that we had in that group, we made some pretty stinkin’ good music. I might be biased, but I’ll take this opportunity to introduce you to it. This is Elizabeth, Dave and I when we were taking some shots, planning on "getting the band back together". Dave is the percussionist, Lizzie’s in the center of course, Danny, who played rhythm, was in Baltimore so he wasn’t in the shot, I played lead and am on the right.
I’m gonna miss Lizzie and the wonderful music that we made. So, to honor her, our friendship and the music I’m going to post 13 of our original songs that I recorded several years ago. That way you can download these tunes to your iPod or whatever and sing along. Let me give you the background.
A couple of years after we stopped playing together regularly, Danny let us know that he was heading to Baltimore. We had about 25 original tunes that we had never really recorded and I decided that we would meet at Lizzies cabin, play the songs and record them live, since that was the most true to our nature and the music. So we met on a Tuesday night, I pressed record on a little Roland VS-1680 recorder and we played through 13 of the songs in an evening, no practice runs. Just play and record. I then came back and added bass and percussion to it to fill it out. The CD is raw and organic. There are definitely some human elements on there, but I love the tunes. I think the energy of the group comes across and I don’t think I could replicate that with a studio redo. So that’s the story, two years of not playing together and we get together to knock out some songs, which is what’s presented here. I call it Two Years on a Tuesday Night. I hope you enjoy.
FYI, these files are M4a so if you’re not in iTunes, you’ll need to download a codec pack for Windows Media Player from here. I’ll also zip these files up in a folder with the album art and make it available in the sidebar for download. For those using an RSS reader, there are embedded audio files below. Come on to the site, it won’t hurt.
Looking Back
February Blues
That last one was about as impromptu as you get. We couldn’t even remember the words, and it was Danny’s big chance to solo. It fit perfectly. I’ll put a link to download the whole album in the sidebar. Grab your free music and enjoy.
Elizabeth, I enjoyed making music with you. I’ll always hear your harmonies when I write. Godspeed, and here’s to the day when we can play these songs again.
