I've joined the 21st century

Now Available on Bandcamp!

 

https://richardamaldonado.bandcamp.com/releases

All 15 songs available, as the album, or as individual tracks!

Summer Sessions 2018, Liner Notes, part one

The songs in this collection were all written in the last 3 or 4 years, but most of them were written this last year.  I think that after they were first written they evolved with a bit of influence from performing them weekly at local farmer's markets.

track #
1. You and Me
    This was really the first song I ever wrote, or at least the first song I began to write.  I remember that when I started it, and even when it was basically finished, I had it in mind that it should be song and played by somebody else, because at the time, I had not yet learned to play or sing in any way that was acceptable to me.  There was a local singer/player who really impressed me, John Moroski, and I had always imagined that he and a girl he had performed with a few times would sing the song. That's not happened and in the mean time, I just started playing it.  The song is a reflection of my life with my wife.

2.  Sleepy Head
     This song happened, as a few of them have, in a moment of realization one morning standing outside and greeting the day.  I often think about my son, when he was just a little guy, and of my dog/friend as she lay on her dog bed, and of my wife, and how I have gotten such joy from just watching them sleep.

3.  Take, a climbers song
     I rock climbed, the mother of my son climbed, and my son started climbing a bit because the woman he was seeing climbed.  When I was climbing, the lead climber, if he started to loose his grip on things, would shout down to the guy on the other end of the rope "Take".  It was a quick way to say take up all the slack in the rope and stop me from falling.  It seemed a good metaphor for a relationship and since my son now had both a climbing partner and a lover, well there you are.  I wrote this song for him, for them.  They married in 2018.



Well this is a start.  I'll get back to this with "Summer Sessions 2018, Liner Notes, part two"

Beta Version, Summer Session 2018

Original album "artwork"
Only a few of those got released into the wild.

CD's as a medium are kind of fun.  If I was a wealthy man I might do what Jack White (White Stripes, Third Man Records,...) has done and just start pressing vinyl.  How cool would that be?  But then, how cool is Jack White.
   The CD is a medium that is actually accessible to me and though it is digital, it still has a tangible presence, and needs to be treated with a little bit of care.  It's an actual thing, and I like that.
   I recently came across a composer who was avoiding the whole physical recording aspect and was going to sell his music solely thru digital downloads.  I get it, it requires much less resource, such as money or material to make the item.  But there is something about having the little disc in my hand that makes me really happy.
   I happen to find the blank CD's that are stamped to look like little vinyl records.  I love 'em.  Only wish they left more room on the label for personalizing.
   The creation of an "album" is a whole different thing than the creation of a song, or piece of music, but it is a bit of fun as well.