Gone Til Spring

"Gone Til Spring" the title of a song I wrote last Fall about the end of the sailing season.  I had just gotten a new sailing rig on a small boat and was struggling with getting comfortable with sailing a small light boat, after years of really preferring a heavier full keeled boat. I like the song because it can easily be perceived as the end of some time with a person and missing them.

I've sent this song out as part of a set of "Seasonal-Musical greeting cards."  It's number 3 of 4 songs that folks will receive.  They are all Demos, which is to say, rough cuts, but in the spirit of fun and celebration, I've sent them out this way, blemishes and all, just like a family would sound singing Christmas carols.

The other significance of the song is that the Boat shop studio is closed up til Spring.  It being a music studio converted from a boat shop, converted from a garage, it can get a bit cold out there, even with the wood stove, which is not tight and singing and breathing smokey air is another challenge my singing does not really need.

The Winter sun will now only get stronger as the days grow longer.

I have released the single of "Return, A Solstice Song" on Bandcamp.  It's a demo version, but I thought with it being the Winter Solstice,  why not.  I want to develop the song a little more, but I'm glad to have celebrated the Solstice with the song as it is.

I haven't been keeping at the blog because I wanted to take a break, have a bit of a cloister as the Winter set in.  I will probably be back at it in the new year.

Seasons Greetings

https://richardamaldonado.bandcamp.com

Winter 2018 songs can be heard at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w0KX3g8q6E

"Summer Sessions 2018, Liner Notes, part two"

"Summer Sessions 2018, Liner Notes, part two"

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 #

4. The Last Reef
     In the old days of sail the crew would climb up the mast of the tall ships, via the rigging, and adjust the size of a sail using "reefs".  The work was hard, and dangerous.  When the wind got so strong that any sail up was too much you'd sail under "bare poles" but that usually meant a loss of maneuverability, and being at the mercy of the sea. 

5. Missing Parts
     It's hard for us to know the stories of those people who are out in the world sleeping rough, or homeless, and how they got were they are.

6. Around Town
      Some of us are broken by love, and instead of trying to dull our experience of heart ache, accept and actively face it.

available at BANDCAMP.COM

"Summer Sessions 2018, Liner Notes, part Three" coming soon.

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!

Video clip!

For no real reason, here is a clip from inside the studio on this rainy morning

The song is the first track on "Summer Sessions 2018",  "You & Me"

Summer Sessions, beta version

This is the original "artwork" for the album cover.

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"

Music style

I just heard back from a family member who took a listen to "Summer Session 2018".  "Folksy" was the descriptive used about the music.  I can agree with that.  The funny thing is that I would not have forecast that this is the music I might someday make.

reclaimed chairs and drum kit

For me, the creative process is really an structured kind of improvisation.  The entire genre of music called jazz embraces this kind of work.  But I didn't create jazz.

What has been coming to the page, thru my fingers, and thru my voice is a bit, "other" for me.  By that I mean that what I end up with isn't what I might set out to do, if I worked that way.  In truth, I don't work that way.  I have a compass point, a direction, but like any path thru the woods, or over the sea, a look back at the course reveals many moments traveling in any direction but the one I might have set out upon.  Because of this I don't always reach any final destination, but I always end up somewhere I want to be, but had no knowledge of before I set out.  I wouldn't change that method of travel, or method of discovery, or creation because it allows for something much greater than I my mind can imagine and allows me to be enriched by the experience, real time.  A bit deep for such simple music, I know.

The art that comes out is deeper than my conscious mind can fathom.  That is what makes making art such an adventure.  It is also what makes life an adventure too if one can allow oneself to be live a bit of a free form jazz version of life.  Really great jazz has some common elements, most of which I aspire to posses in my creation someday, and they are always, virtuosity thru practice and discipline, coupled with sensitivity and openness to feel and be in the present moment, and fearless freedom and acceptance of ones identity.  I think this is true, and the more I look into the artists that inspire me, the more this belief is affirmed.

Yes the music on this album is "Folksy", sure, why not, it's just a word to describe something that is best left unlabeled, and instead just experienced.  Call it what ever you want.

PEACE