Above the Clouds - Why make a CD like this?

Well, as the title states, why do it? I, after all, I'm the man known for volume. I like to shred on guitar, whether it be hair parting blues licks through my Mesa Boogie amp, or blistering post bop lines at nose bleed tempos, to the point of one disgruntled club owner asking me if I had something wrong with my hearing and my cheeky reply of, "ehhh?", as I cupped my hand around my ear.

So why go through the process of making a cd on the mellower side, one that is soothing rather than one that starts forest fires. Well, I’ll tell you, this is an age of noise and volume, from the din of auto traffic, to the BLUUUUUUU! of the triple dipple sized woofers in the cars you occasionally pass at a stop sign that crack your eyeglasses and teeth. This noise is not only present in sound but in our everyday living and the rip roaring chaos of today’s world with the ever presence of war, famine and crime. There is noise on a sonic and spiritual level present everywhere. So, back to the topic at hand, why make a cd like this? Throughout my many years of playing and composing and countless gigs of every imaginable genre, I occasionally have come up with a tune that was based on a rare commodity these days, S-I-L-E-N-C-E. This is where these compositions have started as a basic component. Now, this is not simply silence as the absence of sound. This is the silence one experiences out west in the wilderness, where all you hear is your own breath and a light breeze in the far background. This is the silence you experience when you looked into your loved one’s eyes and speak to each other without words. When you finally accomplish something you’d set out to do that had been years in the making and the feeling of personal fulfillment, that is the silence I refer to here. The tunes on my latest cd, “Above the Clouds” have this silence as their basic building block. Each one of these tunes have a story and a set of fond memories connected with them. So, the inevitable question once again, why make a cd like this? Well, actually, I don’t think I could have made other than a cd as this. The real lasting works of art, whether it be a painting by Monet, a composition of Mozart’s, or a wind sculpted canyon for that matter all have silence in their form and makeup. I am proud of this cd and I feel it will bring you the pleasure which only true spiritual silence can bring.

Leave a comment