(Out of Print)

I completed my second music project in October, 2001. The name of the CD is Kairos, this moment of destiny.
Here is a brief definition: Kai·ros - (ki' ros) n. [Greek] 1. A time pregnant with opportunity and creative possibility as opposed to chronos, the passage of time in a linear fashion. 2. A time of intense focus during which the creative genius transcends the conscious passage of linear time. A more simple definition would be a culmination of events that afford an opportunity that will never happen again - a moment of destiny.

The final mix contains 12 songs - 11 original compositions and a fun flute trio of a traditional song called Angel Band, recently reintroduced by bluegrass veteran, Mr. Ralph Stanley on the soundtrack to the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.

The music features Native American Flutes created by makers (in the order of appearance) Ken Wood, Leonard McGann, J.P.Gomez, Pat Haran, Barry Higgins, David Mason, and Scott Loomis. The music also includes a 1971 Keilworth "New King" Tenor Saxophone, a 1921 Silver Buescher Alto Saxophone, an Ovation "Lightning Bolt" Elite Acoustic/Electric Guitar, a Yamaha APX-4A-SPL Acoustic/Electric Guitar, a Cello, an Acoustic Piano, a Celeste, a Hammond B3 Organ, Tubular Bells, a Marimba, a Pedal Steel Guitar, a Blues Harp, a Mandolin, a Korg 05R/W Sound Canvas controlled via MIDI by a Fatar Studiologic SL-880 88-key keyboard, numerous Drums and Percussion instruments, an Acoustic Bass Guitar, a Guiness high D Irish Whistle, a Generation high C Irish Whistle, and two vocal songs, all performed by me. A good friend of mine and a fabulous musician, Miss Jeanne Bradley played her fretless Warwick Bass Guitar on two of the tracks and a couple good friends of mine and members of the Indiana Flute Circle are featured on one of the songs playing flute solos - Mr. Steve Surette and Mr. Patrick Nielander. Also featured are a fine group of Indiana Crickets residing in my back yard and a fabulous thunderstorm provided by Miss Mother Nature herself.

Here are the songs and a description of each:

01. Kairos, this moment of destiny. The main melody line of this song was performed on a sub-bass, low F#m PVC flute constructed by Ken Wood from Alexandria Indiana. You will also hear a Leonard McGann walnut and cedar F#m flute keyed an octave higher. This is a slow meditative song that was inspired by some of the beautiful Japanese Shakuhachi music I have heard. Like many of my compositions, this would make good soundtrack music for a movie.

02. The Dream of the Ants. This song was inspired by chapter 17 of the book Contact by Carl Sagan. In the chapter, there is mention of an old Chinese folk tale called The Kingdom of the Ants. This tale has been contemporarily retold in a children's book called Night Visitors by author Ed Young. You can read a synopsis here: CLICK This song features two flutes playing a melody in unison over a progressive rhythm track. The two flutes used were an Alaskan Cedar flute in low Bbm by Pat Haran and a high mahogany and walnut "hummingbird" flute in Bbm by J.P. Gomez. The cool bass part on this song was played by Miss Jeanne Bradley.

 

03. Willow Sees the Fire. Willow is the name of my petite black cat. She is a mysterious and sweet feline, quiet and reserved. I met Willow the day she was born. Her mother was a stray tiger in the neighborhood and she had a litter of four kittens on August the 14th 2000 under a bush at the side of a porch. At four weeks, the kittens were abandoned after being moved into a damp and nasty basement under a nearby building. We rescued all four, found homes for two and kept the strongest and the weakest, Willow being the weakest. When she was big enough to start getting up on things, she exhibited this strange fascination with candle flames. I learned early on that Willow couldn't be trusted alone around lighted candles because she would fade into a trance and lean into the fire until she singed her whiskers. For the first 6 months of Willows life, she never had a complete set of whiskers. Finally, the new rule was made that there could be no candles burning within Willow's reach, and if there were, she had to be closely supervised. As soon as she saw the flame, she would become transfixed. Willow is now a healthy and beautiful companion with a full set of whiskers. The flutes on this song are listed incorrectly on the insert in the CD. I discovered this the first time I performed the song live with backup and had picked up the J.P. Gomez hummingbird ready to play. I had to do some fancy shuffling to get the correct flute to complete the song. The actual flute used is the J.P. Gomez mahogany and walnut closed-end Eagle in Em.

04. Talking. This song was written for my daughter, Harmony as a gift for her high school graduation. It was originally performed by a group of 4 musicians and video taped to be presented to her after the graduation ceremony at her reception. When her friends stopped by her reception to join the celebration, the first thing she did was take them into the house and play them the tape. Harmony is presently attending Purdue University as a psychology major. She recently told me that the original version is still her favorite.

 

05. The Last of the Falling Leaves. A lot of people associate this song with the end of autumn. Actually, the song is an early epitaph for the end of trees. Trees are an itegral part of man's existence. If we continue clear cutting the forests it will become one more in a long list of selfish acts that will bring about the end of humanity. We must do everything in our power to protect this natural resource. Without trees, humanity (and most every other species of animal on this planet) will cease to exist. Please help protect these wise and beautiful sentinels that give us air to breath, cool shade and shelter, not to mention their contribution to our music.

06. Cumberland. Many years ago, the band I was a member of started an anual tradition. We would travel to southern Kentucky every August during the week of the full moon to spend 4 or 5 glorious days on Lake Cumberland. It was a time of friends, good music, great food, and fun in the sun and on the water. We were celebrating the end of summer, invited by a very generous good friend who owned a wonderful hand-built home on the banks of the lake. On Saturday night, we would have a "barn dance" and everyone would have the time of their lives. The memories of the many parties I played at Lake Cumberland are sweet and I miss that event more than anything else about the band. This song features Leonard McGann's wonderful F#m flute mixed with a rich saxophone section.

07. The Passing. In the last few sentences of the Stephen King novel, The Green Mile, the main character, Mr. Paul Edgecombe says "We each owe a death, there are no exceptions ..." Hawk LittleJohn was a brief shining light in my life that influenced me from afar. On one occasion I had the honor of entering into an email discussion with his wife, Geri. That was as close as I got to Hawk in-person. In Spirit however, I accepted the man as a teacher and a brother. I got to know him through his brief written words after he became ill with cancer and from the many people, close friends and family who's lives he touched. I had the rare opportunity of attending his memorial celebration in Asheville North Carolina in January of 2001 where I established lifetime friendships with many of his admirers. In Hawk's short life, he provided guidance and insight to thousands of people. He did more good in his short life than most "great" people do in whole lifetimes. Thanks Hawk, this song is my tribute to you and your life. I used an old growth walnut and cherry flute in Em made by Barry Higgins, a J.P. Gomez Singing Bird high Em flute and a Guiness high D diatonic Irish Pennywhistle to play this song.

08. Me, Rosalee and the Wind. This is an old song, circa 1983. The first verse lyrics were written by a good friend of mine from Crawfordsville Indiana named Jay Abbott. Jay is an amazing songwriter and I have admired his style of guitar picking since I met him in the late 1970s. Jay used to write "throwaway" lyrics in order to help establish the melody lines in the songs he wrote, but it seemed he never threw the lyrics away afterwards. This song only had the one verse of lyrics for a long time and he would repeat it several times throughout the song which featured cool chord changes, jazz licks and amazing rhythmic changes. I decided the song needed more than just the one verse of lyrics, so I wrote three more. Jay used his lyrics and adopted one of the verses I wrote and still performs his jazzy version of the song to this day with just the two verses of lyrics. I went into a studio in 1992 and did a completely different version and melody line using both his lyrics and mine, so there are two completely different songs roaming around out there with the same title and some of the same lyrics. Jay finds this very amusing. Even though my version of the song has taken many changes, the version on the CD is the original studio version I recorded in 1992 with a flute playing the second lead instead of an electric guitar. On the first short lead, I used the J.P. Gomez hummingbird Bbm coupled with a Pat Haran Alaskan Cedar Bm an octave lower. On the second and main lead part I used the J.P. Gomez mahogany and walnut closed-end Eagle Em flute. Again, Miss Jeanne Bradley added a wonderful bass part on her Warwick fretless bass.

09. Cloud Symphony. This song is my favorite song on the CD. Early one Sunday morning in the summer of 2001, I was awakened by an approaching thunderstorm. It was one of those storms that seemed to move right over the house and I had enough time to turn on the recorder and place a microphone against a window screen in my music room. I recorded about 8 minutes of that dramatic summer thunderstorm. It was the clearest thunderstorm I had ever heard recorded, rivaling some of the Environment LPs I had listened to back in the 70s. At one point early in the storm, you can hear a thunderclap that echoes through the neighborhood for 30 seconds or more, sounding like something produced from an effects processor, but it is not - that was really the way it sounded. I knew I had to do something with this recording, so I decided to do a solo percussion piece over the top of it. Once I had the drum tracks recorded, I got the idea of inviting a couple flute-playing friends over to play over the top of it all. Steve Surette and Patrick Nielander were kind enough to come by my studio and put down parts. Steve plays a David Mason burnished cane flute in Gm, Patrick plays his favorite Scott Loomis Gm flute and I play my Leonard McGann F#m. I had to manipulate the pitch of the recording so that the F#m became a Gm like Steve's and Patrick's flutes.

Patrick recorded his part on the evening of September the 11th - it was a somber and emotional experience.

10. In Blue Country. This song was an experiment to see what a flute would sound like with a pedal steel guitar - sort of an "indigenous flute meets Nashville" kind of thing. Again I used the JP Gomez hummingbird Bbm coupled with the Pat Haran Alaskan Cedar low Bbm and played the break on a J.P. Gomez walnut Crane flute in Gm.

11. Coyote Tree. I was inspired to create this song after reading the book A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jenson. In the story, Derrick makes a deal with a pack of coyotes that were sneaking into his barn yard and eating his chickens. One evening he caught them red-handed and in the process of chasing them away offered them a deal. If they would stop taking his chickens, he promised to give them all the leftovers whenever he dressed one for himself. Amazingly enough (he was sure he was going crazy) the deal worked. When he would dress a chicken for himself, he would take the remains into the edge of the woods and leave them by an old tree that he had noticed coyote tracks around. His offering was always gone by the next day and they never raided his barnyard again (until he started hedging on his end of the bargain). The tree became forever known as the "Coyote Tree". I use Leonard McGanns walnut and cedar F#m on this song.

12. Angel Band. (by the Sugar Creek Boys). This is a traditional bluegrass song brought back into the limelight by Mr. Ralph Stanley in the soundtrack to the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? I decided to have a little fun with this song and record it as if you were listening to an old-time gospel radio station from back in the 1930s. The spoofed show is The Bluegrass Gospel Hour and the spoofed group are 6 young men from Browns Valley Indiana called the Sugar Creek Boys (it is actually just me). The tinny radio station sound reverts to full stereo beginning at the first chorus. I played all three parts of this song on a special flute made by Barry Higgins, a low C diatonic (tuned like an Irish flute) that gets almost two octaves. This flute is the one pictured on the CD cover (see below). I probably could have used a little more practice before tackling the song, but I was just too impatient - I wanted to get the song down on disc! I also use a Generation high C diatonic Pennywhistle in the lead break.

 

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