Singwriter

Best Sunday Heart

Brad Yoder

Reverie Records

7211 Thomas Blvd.

Pittsburgh, PA 15208

 

 

Yoder’s voice and some of his songs on Best Sunday Heart reminded me of Dean Friedman and of Stephen Bishop. His way with music has many hints of Greg Greenway and Pierce Pettis (who seems to have become a big influence for young singer/songwriters). A great guitarist, Yoder starts this CD with a wonderful guitar solo Stevens Avenue N, a guitar playing that enriches all of his music but this CD needs to be listened to a lot before it will grow on the listener. This is Yoder’s first CD, after two previously produced cassettes most likely sold at his shows. He is 31 years old and born in Virginia, now living and performing in Pittsburgh. He is also a teacher and plays guitar, mandolin, bass and saxophone.

 

In this instantaneous world, Yoder’s music asks for a lot of attention. It took eight listenings to this CD before I really started to enjoy it whereas normally it only takes me two listens. Best Sunday Heart takes a little more time and the listener will probably need to sit and read the lyrics along with listening to it in order to understand this highly literate CD.

 

Yoder seems to be haunted by magic, dreams telling him everything is going to be okay, voices of love, fears of ghosts and loneliness. In “Three Times Tonight,” Yoder seems to be telling himself he is not lonely but the song only shows just how lonely he is:

 

 

and I am not alone when you are anywhere

then we’re together and it’s the only place to be

and I am not alone when you are anywhere

 

 

That stanza is sung four times in a row so to give an even a stronger feeling of a prayer for a love not returned. Again, in Here Of all Places:

 

Walk a city sidewalk,

cross a city crosswalk

swim against the current of the people

as they hurry off to work or school or family,

perfectly distracted, still there’s no such things as strangers

here of all places.

 

 

This is a solid CD. However, although I think all of the songs are well done, it’s a hard one to listen to all in one sitting. There are many moods presented from quiet ballads, to more rhythmic and rocking tunes. But try as I may, the album was too eclectic for my taste and the song did not segue easily for my mood. While this happens also with veteran singer/songwriters with more experience than Yoder, there tends to be more of a cohesiveness to the types of songs and themes for each individual CD. Yoder needs to learn the art of picking the right music for his album because while the songs were good, the album did not fit together well.

 

If you are willing to get past this obstacle, there are many gems and strong tunes on this album, like Gingko Leaves, or the more rocking, Angry To The World, in which Yoder sings:

 

 

For what it’s worth, and I’m not sure

A cup of earth traded for snake-oil cure

A dearth of love, a lust for more

like we’re angry at the world.

 

 

This is the kind of CD that if sent to a record company would be dismissed at once, because no one has time to truly listen. But, this may be the music we need most: profound and sincere.

 

 

Song List

STEVENS AVENUE N

ONE PERFECT DAY

LOOKING DOWN

CEMETERY STREET

GINKO LEAVES

EARRING

UNWIND

MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE

ANGRY AT THE WORLD

CAN’T SLEEP

ROOM IN MY HEAD

KEEP ME AROUND

HERE OF ALL PLACES

THREE TIMES TONIGHT

STEVENS AVENUE S

 

 

 

 

One Man Service Station

Christopher Williams

(CW70001)

Big Red Van Music

P. O. Box 45873

Seattle WA 98145

Most of the songs in this album sound like an MTV unplugged version of more rocking versions of the same song. You almost expect to hear these songs in an electric setting, but there are no electric instruments on this disc.

 

It is a most energetic album with powerful guitar chords, a strong voice imposing itself over them, very professionally done. Where Williams is original is in his lyrics. They may be the opposite of what they teach in workshops but they work: many of this songs start with a philosophical view, and just when you think they will end that way, he tells a story of someone or about himself that turns the whole song in a new direction. It is your turn to figure out the relation between the two. The songs are written as paragraphs of prose, giving the feeling that someone is talking to a friend and explaining something important. These Days, the first song on the album, begins with: “Without confusion clarity brings nothing, without questioning answers won’t bring truth. Without death life to its fullest will be lost like the innocence of youth.” Then in the middle of the song he turns to his lover: “Step inside my heart, but walk gently….” All this intimate, almost personal thinking, is sung in a rocking manner. This contradiction is probably what makes the CD so special.

 

The songs are basically played by four musicians: Williams on guitars, David Raven on drums, Spencer Capier on violin and mandolin, and David Miner on bass. Miner, who also gave one of the best productions of the nineties in Chase the Buffalo by Pierce Pettis, also produced this cd.

 

In a way Williams reminds me more of early Pettis than his rather quiet Chase the Buffalo. Pettis also had a rocker soul inside of him fighting with a folkie. He went for the folkie in his last albums. I think that in this world full of categorization Williams will have also to decide where to go, unless he becomes as widely known as Neil Young. Young, and also many of Young’s pupils like Son volt, Wilco, Counting Crows, The Jayhawks and specially, Jackopierce, come to mind when listening to One Man Service Station.

 

Maybe I’m getting too old for rock ‘n’ roll- although I found this album very interesting the two songs I loved the most are the two quietest songs in the album: Hope for Morning and Only One Love.

 

This is a CD that will appeal to people who like the “No Depression” acts more than to folkies.

 

 

Song list:

These Days

Better Things

Wippel’s Last Customer

Ending Before Beginning

This Song

Fly for Freedom

White Line

Only One Love

Southbound Sunrise (instrumental)

Superman

 

 

Individual

Kevin So

KS6977

WingBone Music

190 Washington Street

Brighton, MA 02135

email: kevinso@aol.com

Kevin So has opened for many famous artists like Richie Havens, Jack Hardy, Ellis Paul and Martin Sexton, and it is easy to see why. He earns a degree for encompassing the whole American roots world from the twenties till the nineties. And though I haven’t he ard him live I wouldn’t miss the chance if I had it.

 

The problem with Kevin So’s second CD is that a recorded CD requires different things than a live show. It is very hard to see anything special and really original in this 75 minutes CD. One moment he is Paul Simon, the other he is Chris Smither, then R.E.M., Stephen Stills or Tom Waits, then Little Feat or many American bands of the seventies, and so on. He’s got a strong voice, but his songs are not up to the task. The main shortcoming is his lyrics which talk mostly about teenage love in a way that’s been do ne many times before in the pop world:

 

 

You say you’re lonely well I’m lonely too

You say you want me well I want you too

The situation the simple plan

you’ll be the woman I’ll be the man.

 

 

 

(Bad Weather Blues)

It was once expected that singer-songwriters, or at least the best of them, brought with them an experience of life and a new and original point of view to what they see. Kevin is the first Asian-American (Chinese?) singer-songwriter I have listened to, but none of his family roots seems to get into his songs; however, there is one song sung in Spanish and English (that reminded me of James McMurthy).

 

Individual is more like the cassettes of yore that were made by singer-songwriters to promote themselves to club owners, and to sell in shows. So is convincing in this part of the task. I think many club owners will find him interesting and will invite him to perform.

 

It will sure be an interesting CD to look back on and listen to in a few years when Kevin finds his voice. For the moment he is a singer-songwriter waiting to happen.

 

 

Song List:

Big Circle Blues

Little Greek Corner

Til The Morning Comes

Cadillac Queen

Dirty Ashes

Ole Man Driver

Individual

Spider Web

Bad Weather Blues

Krista

Better Man Than Me

Ticket To The Sky

Home Again

Shooting Star

 

 

Parallel Lives

Dave Mallett

Flying Fish CD FF 670

Rounder Records

One Camp Street

Cambridge Massachusetts 02140

 

Parallel Lives is Dave Mallett’s tenth recording and it is good cause for celebration. After two Vanguard releases that brought him a new audience and which tried to market him as the new Hal Ketchum (meaning good songs overproduced), he is back with his small label, Flying Fish.

 

“Back” means he is back to what he does best: great songs, great guitar playing and great singing. Without any adornment, these songs are strong. Parallel Lives is a live recording with Mallet and Steven Sheehan on guitars, Mike Budd on bass, and an uncredited harmonica player (probably Mallett). That’s it- only the singing and the songs.

 

Mallet recorded his first LP in 1978 and my big question is why isn’t he as famous as Gordon Lightfoot? They both cover the same territory and with the same convincing, timeless songs. Perhaps Mallett just arrived a bit too late to be on the train of seventies folk revival. There is a revival every ten years, though, so if we are on one of them right now, then maybe his big time has come. If you ever liked Lightfoot, James Taylor, or John Denver, you will probably like Parallel Lives, too.

 

About half the songs on Parallel Lives are new renditions of previously recorded songs, while the other half are new tunes. The subjects of Mallet’s songs always have something to do with memories- a town’s past, a love affair remembered, or an old car. There is a longing for something simpler (whether it ever existed or not) which makes the longing a reason to go on.

 

Summer of My Dreams was a hit for Kathy Mattea (and it was also covered wonderfully by Dolores Keane) but Mallett’s simplicity is even more touching than previous renditions. This song illustrates what makes Mallett such a strong songwriter. The lyrics could have been written any time in the last 500 years:

 

 

By the shade of this old tree

In the summer of my dreams

By the tall grass, by the wild rose

Where the trees dance as the wind blows…

 

Living in a big polluted city, this is like going to the mountain and smelling fresh air. I found myself singing this song quite often and the words simply stuck in my mind.

 

Two songs on this CD were co-written with Hal Ketchum- Like This and Daddy’s Oldsmobile, the latter of which was one of Ketchum’s greatest hits. Here again, though, I find Mallet’s version more honest and sensitive, his voice giving the song a timeless value. Many of the other songs on Parallel Lives have been covered (and will surely be covered in the future) by other artists and they have sometimes gone on to become big hits. But Parallel Lives is the real thing and, in all cases, Mallet’s versions of the songs equal or outperform the covers. He always gives much more profundity and insight to the songs. Most of the songs on this CD have the word “classic” written all over them. Indeed, the only problem I find with this CD is that it is too short; at 50 minutes long, it could hold a good six or seven more songs.

 

If you’ve never heard Dave Mallet before, this is a good CD with which to start. As a matter of fact, if you want to start listening to singer- songwriters for the first time to understand why some people can’t stop talking about this style of music, this is a CD that may convince you to look for many others.

 

 

Track List:

I Hate To See This Town Go Down

Summer Of My Dreams

Closer To the Truth

I Picture You

You Say The Battle Is Over

Phil Brown

Showbound

Garden Song

After The Fall

Like This

Daddy’s Oldsmobile

My Old Man

Nothin’ But A Long Goodbye

Parallel Lives

 

 

 

All songs by Dave Mallet except “Like This” and “Daddy’s Oldsmobile” by Dave Mallett and Hal Ketchum.

 

 

Lost In The Green

David Elias

SSP114CD

David Elias

P.O. Box 4793

Burlingame, CA 94011

email: delias@ix.netcom.com

 

Lost In The Green is Elias’ debut album from 1995. It’s the kind of debut album which gets you excited about his next album. Despite the fact that his next album, Time Forgets, has already been released as I am writing this review and more than lives up to this artists’ potential, this is still a very good debut cd. While Time Forgets is more electric and better produced than Lost In The Green. The first word that comes to mind in describing Elias’ music is Honesty. Elias doesn’t pretend to be anything that he isn’t. His songs come straight from the heart, and are sung here with minimal instrumentation; mostly guitar, with an occasional fiddle and mandolin. He in the footsteps of Townes Van Zandt, covering two of his songs, Dollar Bill Blues and Nothin. He also reminds one of an early Dylan or John Prine. All the other songs on the album with the exception of these two were written by Elias himself.

 

In “Eternal Youth,” Elias sings:

 

 

What may well not concern you

it may before too long

the world may overturn you

and kill you when you’re strong

 

I hardly imagine better words to describe how the world is affecting our lives at the end of this century, while we still try to live in our own cocoons. But, there is no way to escape the problems of the world. We have to face them and not ignore them. The music has the vital energy of the sixties; a long lost energy. Vivid songs, songs that make you think put Elias near Richard Dobson, Rex Foster, Guy Clark and all the great troubadours who make our lives easier to bear.

 

If you like your music plain and simple, you can’t go wrong by buying Times Forget” or Lost In The Green.” So, don’t ask ten years from now, when everyone else has discovered Elias, why you didn’t read about him before, because here he is: we should all be listening to Elias.

 

 

Song List

Time To Sleep Corrina

Lost In The Green

Eternal Youth

Light As A Rall

Dollar Bill Blues

Nothin’

Rhythm Of Light

Season Of The Fall

May People

Stone House On Blueberry Hill

Every Hour, Every Day

Mainland

The Great Unknown

 

 

Frisco Mabel Joy Revisited:

For Mickey Newbury

Various Artists

APR CD 1048

Applesseed Records

P.O.Box 2593

West Chester, PA 19380

 

 

I have no idea why I am an obsessive collector of Tribute albums, in spite of the fact that more than eight out of ten disappoint me very quickly. I may be looking for something that just isn’t there. So let me get this straight right now: in spite of what you might have heard this not a exactly tribute album. The word tribute doesn’t appear anywhere on the cd, and the only words are “For Mickey Newbury”. At last, this is an act of love.

Tribute albums tend very often to have three kinds of performers on them: Those who really like the song they are performing, those who are invited because they are famous and are quite indifferent to the song they are singing, and then there are those who are not famous enough but think that being on a Dylan tribute is good marketing. Since Newbury is not really a superstar we have stayed only with lovers of his songs singing his music.

 

Newbury’s Frisco Maybel Joy was released in 1971 to an indifferent world. The LP never made the charts but it seems that everyone who heard his early music was either influenced by it or helped them to become singer songwriters. It is not that Newbury’s songs are unknown, any American has probably heard half a dozen of them performed by other artists, who topped the charts with his masterpieces. There are around 350 recorded covers of his songs.

 

This cd is a revision of that LP in the same order that the songs appeared in the original album, performed by other artists, plus the song San Fransisco Maybel Joy, which didn’t appear in the original album (the original appears in Feels like Rain and Heaven Helps the Child).

 

I wouldn’t dare to compare this cd to original, this is altogether another album and as such is very successful. I listened to this cd 50 times before reviewing it and it gave me new angles from which to look at these familiar songs, as well as hours of enjoyment. All the versions here have something new to say about the songs, although I have to say that none of them go as deep as Newbury’s versions. I know that would be too much to ask.

 

Although tributes to specific LP’s are not new, there is one to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumor and also a very good tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska titled Badlands, I think that this cd is better than both of them and of the many tribute albums that have flooded the marked in the last ten years. It could easily be in the top ten lists for year 2000 of many folk fans and many readers of FAME. And one more thing, if you don’t have the original album then buy it, too, and other Mickey Newbury cd’s. They are all great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Track List:

Prologue – Bill Frisell

An American Trilogy – Midnight Choir

How Many Times (Must The Piper Be Paid For His Song) – Walkabouts

Interlude (Side A) – Bill Frisell

The Future’s Not What It Used To Be – Garry Heffern

Mobile Blue – Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men

Frisco Depot – Meredith Miller Band

You’re Not My Same Sweet Baby – Chuck Prophet

Interlude (Side B) – Bill Frisell/Robin Holcomb

Remember The Good – Michael Fracasso

Swiss Cottage Place – David Halley

How I Love Them Old Songs – The Hole Dozen

San Francisco Mabel Joy – Kris Kristofferson

 

 

 

Ralph’s Last Show

Fred Eaglesmith

SIG 1265

Signature Sounds

P. O. Box 106

Whately, MA 01093

 

Amazing! Amazing! and nothing short of amazing!… Should I say it again? This is the reincarnation of Jim Morrison, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, the early Allman Brothers and all that was great about rock’n'roll before you had to sell a million records to be considered successful. There is more energy in this cd than in the whole MTV top 100 and if someone knew how to convert it into electricity we would have enough of it for the next ten years on the whole planet.

Most readers here may have heard of Eaglesmith when he released Drive In Movie in 1996, but his career goes back to the late 70′s, and his first LP was released in 1980. Listening to his 90′s cd’s you can’t ignore the fact that we are talking about a very special performer. A Canadian, he is as good and as special as Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn and the Cowboy Junkies.

 

His songs are songs about small town America, about old John Deers that seem to have more life than all of Manhattan and Paris put together, about loving a girl and becoming friend with her father who’s trying to ignore this relationship, it’s about trains that take you away from life and into a harder life again and again, it’s about lost loves and lives, lost illusions and dead ends. Fred Eaglesmith, like Charles Bukowski, has lived this life of despair and not knowing if there’ll be food in a week, and he knows how to tell his story and the story of the people he saw in the deep well of the capitalist paradise.

 

In Ralph’s Last Show a double live Cd commemorating the last appearance of Fred’s guitarist Ralph Shipper with the band, we get a rough acoustic sound. More acoustic than any of his recordings since 1994′s live cd From Paradise Hotel. The songs here are from the years 1996-2001, from the Things Is Changing cd and up to new songs from this year, not appearing on any other cd. The band includes only 4 players, including the special sound of mandolinist William Bennett (If the name sounds familiar, he is the Canadian singer-songwriter from the 70′s).

 

I found versions of 49 Tons, I like Trains and others appearing here from his back catalog to be much better than the studio versions. I think this is Eaglesmith’s best cd, and I hope this will be the Comes Alive cd that makes him one of the most famous singers to come from Canada. I think he should be in the same league as the Canadians mentioned here.

 

Songs range from rocking songs like Mighty Big Cars” and Benching Babies to touching ballads like John Deer and Spooking The Horses. I think this cd could very well find a place in folky’s houses like mine, because of its very acoustic sound, as well as rockers, because of its energy. Still, this is not Bill Morrissey and you wouldn’t like to go to sleep with this cd. Play it loud!

 

One minor quibble, the playing time of both cd’s together are a bit longer than 80 minutes, and I just wonder why we needed two cd’s with a retail price of $22.50 when it could all fit into one cd. But every minutes is worth a million…

 

 

Track List:

Disc: 1

Intro

Freight Train

105

Mighty Big Car

White Trash

Good Enough

Livin’ Out On the Road

Carter

Time To Get A Gun

Flowers In The Dell

He’s A Good Dog

Lucille

How’s Ernie

Disc: 2

Pretty Good Guy

John Deere

Carmelita

Benchseat Baby

Spookin’ The Horses

Crazier

Big Hair

I Like Trains

Rodeo Boy

Crashin’ & Burnin’

Alcohol & Pills

49 Tons

 

 

 

 

Still Listening

Michael Tiernan

http://www.tiernantunes.com/

 

Michael Tiernan takes the stoic position of the artists looking at life. His music is lyrical and contemplative. His songs are long and almost always exceed five minutes. Not the kind of music that can become a hit. Each song needs to be listened to carefully and repeatedly to really be appreciated. Tiernan describes modern life and often cites TV as the fire in the middle of the house, people sitting around it looking, or waiting for an answer from it, or just trying to forget their lives through it. “There’s nothing like TV, to take away our memory/There’s nothing like a cell phone, so we can never be alone/There’s nothing like a video, to destroy our imagination/There’s nothing like itself anymore.”

 

Although Tiernan thinks TV is a negative thing, still he considers it to be the place to escape to when escaping from the world. In a way, Tiernan preaches without preaching to take life into one’s own hands. This CD is self produced as was his first CD Two Weeks, and although it only includes vocals and guitars, played by Tiernan himself, Still Listening is highly produced, with overdubbing, backing vocals and more than one guitar playing lead, including a 12-string.

 

I found this approach to be successful at times, but also missed the point many other times. I am sure that Tiernan’s work could benefit from a producer who could offer other sonic and harmonic ideas. Adding a few more instruments, three or four more, could also help make his 75 minutes of observational song more palatable. The Boston area singer-songwriter sound and coffeehouse stalwarts such as David Wilcox have influenced Tiernan. Often his way of taking the lines a bit longer than his normal breath evoked Ellis Paul, and also Paul’s friends Dave Nachmanoff and Don Conoscenti. I mean this reference more as a way of placing Tiernan than limiting his own growth space and creativity. I find Tiernan to be a fresh voice of very high quality. I am not sure he’s found his groove, and suspect that bringing different approaches to his recording process could make a telling difference.

 

Tiernan’s first CD Two Weeks sounds like a demo, and he lets on that he plans to rerecord the songs one day. I found the material on his first CD to be very good, and I even preferred slightly the sound of the first one to the second, although production values are virtually non-existent. In conclusion, I would say that Tiernan’s songwriting star is definitely one to watch for. Listen to some of these songs that can downloaded from his site before buying and see what you think. David Wilcox and Ellis Paul should be delighted by this CD. If you have the opportunity to hear Tiernan perform in a venue near you, go. I am really curious to hear what sonic directions Tiernan takes in setting his next batch of songs.

 

Track List:

The Other Side

Drive

The Great Unknown

The Track Entire Song!

Bullet Train

My Own Two Legs

Unplug

Ego

West Coast Life

Better

Knowing You

World Of Gold

Lifeless

Teaching Me

 

Archaeology

Chris Rosser

(ISG CD 2010)

ISG Records

P. O. Box 9974

Asheville, NC 28815

704-669-4299

EMAIL: ISGRecords@aol.com

 

If you like David Wilcox you’ll also like Chris Rosser. The similarity in their voices, singing, and guitar playing is so great I wondered in one of the songs (Faraway Train in which Wilcox appears as a backing musician) if it wasn’t a duet.

 

Chris Rosser is a multi-instrumentalist. He plays guitars, sitars, bass, recorder, cittern, and another dozen instruments on Archaeology. He is a multi-talented guy who has been collecting awards since 1994, including New Folk finalist at Kerrville Folk Festival, 1996, Troubadour finalist at Telluride Bluegrass Festival, 1995 & 1996, his song The Living In Me (which I think is the best song in this CD), selected for EcoMusic’s 1996 environmental awareness recording, first place in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at the Merle Watson Memorial Festival, 1995 (second place in 1994) and first place award in Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest, 1994.

 

This is quite impressive for a 27 year old songwriter. But… the overall impression I get from this disc is that Rosser has done his homework very well, that he is a good pupil of Wilcox and others (Brooks Williams comes to mind) but he has yet to find his own voice.

 

By one of those cosmic coincidences the first song Follow the Water Down seems to be a song about the death of the young singer songwriter Jeff Buckley, though it was obviously written before his recent drowning:

 

 

Down this river of madness

we race and spin

two heads above the surface

in a desperate swim

 

Of course this song is not only about drowning in waters, but also in life, which seems to be what happened to the hypersensitive Buckley. In Dancing Dervish and In Everything (Momsoma) Rosser tries to bring a world music instrumentation, including dumbeck, dabul, sitar, kalimba, etc… It reminds one of Tony Bird or Paul Simon’s Graceland. These are, to my ears, the weakest songs in Archaeology. The experiments are interesting and may lead to something in the future, but in this album the dervish seems to be dancing paso doble. Maybe Rosser should do a trip to Mevlana. I think he might come back with a great song.

 

The songs in the album are not personal- Rosser is not a confessional songwriter. His is a more philosophical style. In his best song The Living In Me, the only one in this album with only voice and guitar, he sings:

 

 

This river runs deeper

than any street I’ve ever known

It cuts into my heart

like that canyon down below

so may this land stretch forever

may these hills be ever green…

 

Featured in Archaeology are many guest musicians including Lynn Rosser, David Wilcox, Christine Kane, The Nudes, Billy Jonas, Mary Davis, Anne Lalley, Marshall Ballew and Nance Pettit.

 

All in all this is an interesting debut album, and it shows possibilities in the artist. Chris Rosser is obviously a singer songwriter to watch, and someone from whom we can expect great songs in the future.

 

 

Song List

Follow the Water Down

Archeology

Red Harvest Moon

Dancing Dervish

Faraway Train

The Laundromat Song (Imagine That)

In Everything (Momosoma)

Carousel

I Will

Down to Dixie County

There’s A Light

The Living In Me

 

 

Affected By the Moon

Chuck Pyle

Bee’n'Flower Music

P. O. Box 871

Palmer Lake, CO 80133

800-311-1839

Chuck Pyle’s music is so simple as to make a reviewer despair. The man succeeds where so many others fail, in convincing you that with three chords, simple words and the most basic melody a song can make you cry. He convinces you that he invented music last week and here for the first time you are listening to this magic thing that makes noises so pleasant.

 

It is so hard to define what makes Pyle so special. The easiest way would be to quote a few lyrics and just say that this is an acoustic album, full of great folk songs. However, by saying this, I feel I have said nothing of the magic this man has been able to bring to my life. All his CD’s live in a place where time has not yet visited, where you can hide from the craziness of modern life, where everything makes sense at once.

 

He has been called a Zen cowboy and at times he may remind you of Ian Tyson, but mostly I think Affected by the Moon is linked to the slow music of the thirties. It’s spring forever and no one will ever change.

 

The moon and its romantic meaning is spread all over Affected By The Moon, as he sings in the title song:

Far from the frantic pace

Of a life so tout de suit

This out of the way place

Carries you and me

The romantic consequences

The coming of our senses

And not a moment too soon

So very affected by the moon

 

 

In his early CD’s Pyle rarely used drums or percussion, he made them with a guitar and a violin. In this CD Pyles music has extended to a 4-5 musicians band and some tracks really rock. This is soft rock, the kind you used to hear from the likes of James Taylor, Stephen Bishop or Danny O’Keefe in the 70′s.

 

Calm, timeless music, the flow of Pyle’s music will make the perfect romantic evening, or bring back to you memories of those wonderful moments when love is everything, when everything seems possible, when the sky is the limit, beyond the affected moon, beyond your dreams. Enjoy it to the last drop!

 

Track List

Affected by the Moon

97 Hillside Road

Blue Train

If Not Now

Outlaw’s Dream

Inside Of My Face

Why Pretend

Laurie Ann

Romancing The Moment

I Love You Back

Think I’ll Go To Texas

Cowboy’s Christmas Dream

Spank