Think Of Spring

Description

"I first heard Lady In Satin in a mega-mall somewhere in San Francisco. I was around 20 and didn't know much about Billie's records, her life or the evolution of her voice over the years. Anyway, the sound was coming from across the mall and I remember confusing her voice with a beautifully distorted electric guitar – an otherworldly thing floating on this strange sad ocean of strings, and I was hooked for life. Ten years later, in 2006, I recorded an instrumental electric guitar version of "I'm A Fool To Want You" for my album Post-War. In 2018, I performed a concert in LA of all the songs from Lady In Satin with a quintet and began preparing guitar arrangements for the recordings compiled on this record – Think of Spring. The title comes from a poem written in 1924 by Jane Brown-Thompson which later became "I Get Along Without You Very Well" in 1938 – the first song here. The concept behind Think of Spring is to filter the songs and strings of Lady In Satin using a single acoustic guitar, employing various alternate tunings and minimal studio textures and manipulations. Most of the songs were recorded on an analog Tascam four-track. Think of Spring is inspired by Billie Holiday, Ray Ellis, J.J. Johnson, John Fahey, and Robert Johnson.