I'm happy to announce that I will soon release my first solo CD. Hardly could I predict, when I took up the pedal steel at the blessed age of 42, that it would take me out of a very long period of musical unproductivity. Having played the six-string guitar for eons and the lapsteel for some decade, I instantly fell in love with the pedal steel after my first visits to Austin, TX, where I had the fortune to watch Ricky Davis and Big Jim Murphy play with Redd Volkaert. After having realized that I was not made for playing country music with the pedal steel, I turned to the music that I play in my own bands: blues and jazz. Thanks to very tolerant and patient band members, and some very good friends at this forum, I think I have found a path to my musical expression. Yes, I simply love this instrument!
Since this will be my first experience in producing a CD, I cannot really anticipate how much time it will take from the time of completion of the recordings to the time of delivery of actual physical CDs (people tell me that there are things such as mixing, mastering, CD cover design etc to deal with
). But I expect to have copies of the CD available early in 2009.In the mean time, I'd like to make preview versions of the songs available on the web. Below you will find two links to the first and second half of the song list.
Songs 1 - 5
Songs 6 - 10
The songs are:
1. A Smooth One / Always Be In Love With You (a Benny Goodman song integrated with an old song recorded by Duke Robillard)
2. Vintage Vibe Shuffle (an original song that I wrote in 2001)
3. Liquid Sun (an original song that I wrote during my jazz-rock-fusion days in 1979)
4. Birdland (this is how the classic Zawinul song would probably sound if Weather Report had been an orchestra of pedalsteels)
5. Two Timin' Lover (an original blues song that I wrote in 2005)
6. Green Theme (a jazz ballad written by Swedish guitarist Max Schultz, probably being played for the first time on a pedal steel ... at least on the C6 neck)
7. All My Might (a new original "acid jazz" type of composition)
8. I Wish (my interpretation the funky Stevie Wonder song)
9. Parkin' with Charlie (thanks to Jim Loessberg, I just had to have a Charlie Parker medley on this record, which includes my favorite tune Bloomdido in a somewhat odd arrangement)
10. Round Midnight (closing the CD with the beautiful Thelonius Monk ballad)
-- Jan
