| Produced by Alex de Grassi
Recorded by Alex de Grassi and Neal Harris at Maggie’s House, Redwood Valley, CA
Edited and Mixed by Neal Harris and Alex de Grassi at Affinity Music, Rohnert Park CA
Mastered by Neal Harris at Affinity Music, Rohnert Park CA
All arrangements by Alex de Grassi, published by Tropo Music (BMI)
Alex plays Lowden and Jeff Traugott guitars and uses D’Addario strings
Michael Manring plays bass on Oh Susanna
Joe Craven plays percussion on Oh Susanna and Hushabye
(Joe Craven appears courtesy of Blender Logic Arts)
The songs and rhymes we learned as kids seemed to be everywhere. We learned them from books, parents, playmates, and in schoolrooms. I eventually came to think of them as traditional folk music with set lyrics, melodies, and rhythms. In rediscovering these songs years later, I have come to appreciate the maxim that folk music is a "living" tradition and that each generation will find relevance and a way to reinterpret these songs. In that spirit, I have arranged traditional melodies to reflect the musical idioms and social climate of today’s multi-cultural landscape. Thus, the cowboy classic Streets of Laredo is transformed from a waltz to 4/4 time with an urban hip-hop beat, Oh Susanna becomes a slightly demented "banjoesque" samba, and the frontier lament Single Girl draws inspiration from the horn section of an R&B band. Here, then, is my attempt to tell a few American stories and weave a musical fabric whose threads reach through time to unite the present with the past—music for now and then. |
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