It's like church music without the "churchiness" that'll take you on a personal spiritual quest and the musicians are the best of the Muscle Shoals Old-School Swamper Soul and R&B genre.

9 MP3 Songs
GOSPEL: Contemporary Gospel, ROCK: Roots Rock



Details:
I am Chuck Snow. Some of my musical friends have taken to calling me Doc because my day job is in the medical field, and we frequently discuss these matters. The record, "Pray For Me", nine songs in all, is an interesting departure, in that I am not a performing musician. I am a songwriter. The most notable musician/songwriter I can think of who has done this, publish a record of his demos, is the legendary songwriter Dan Penn.

Mine is interesting in that I had other people do the singing and playing except on one track, a tune called "Radio Blues", where I sang the vocal. The gracious men who helped me so much with this project are Ray Reach and Wayne Perkins. Both are prodigious talents, as you can hear on this record.

I hope you are blessed by this music. It is as good as we could make it in the demo frame of reference....not perfect, but pretty good all the same. If we had gone for a full-blown production, we would have taken out all the MIDI parts and replaced them with live-played parts, and would have recorded background vocals.

I wrote all the words and composed the music, and Ray Reach and Wayne Perkins did all but one of the vocals and all the instruments. There is no "band" per se.

This record of songwriter demos is a really good showcase of Ray Reach's producing and recording skills, MIDI programming of horns, bass and drums and singing, rhythm electric guitar and fills, wonderful keyboard skills on the piano and Hammond B-3 organ, and with Wayne Perkins, singing and guitar playing as good as it gets. I am happy to promote their skills and if you need any of what they do there is hardly any better anywhere. E-mail me for more information. bigrfish@charter.net

All the guitar solos except one, and rich and interesting acoustic rhythm parts, an "eat your heart out Willie Nelson" gut-string guitar solo, and a beautiful acoustic slide guitar solo on âthe mighty Taylorâ are Wayne's work, and he is singing on many of the tunes.

Ray Reach does the rhythm electric parts and a hard blues guitar solo on the last song on the record. Ray is the director of education for the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and a University of North Texas alumnus (along with Pat Metheney, Lou Marini, Jr., and Norah Jones), a member of the famed One OâClock Lab Band at No.Texas, a gifted big band arranger, and a veteran of having produced many albums on a wide variety of artists, specializing in Big Band Jazz and what we refer to as âOld Schoolâ Rhythm and Blues. Ray has a wonderful Big Band record he produced on "Blue" Lou Marini, Jr., entitled, "Lou's Blues", which is in wide release nationally under the Chase Music Group's distribution. Ray has produced Big Band Jazz records on two of the members of the 70âs band, âBlood, Sweat, and Tearsâ. How cool is that??

Wayne Perkins is a veteran of collaborations with the Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Leon Russell, John Sebastian, Louann Barton, and Lawrence Welk, among others literally too numerous to mention. Wayne is one of the original Muscle Shoals Swampers (so named by Mick Jagger when he was in Alabama cutting a record, and immortalized in song in Lynyrd Skynyrdâs âSweet Home, Alabamaâ). Wayne has songs he wrote that were recorded by Michael Bolton, Millie Jackson, and Billy Ray Cyrus. He won a grammy for his producing of a tune on Al Green, and has lately done road duty playing bass with Lonnie Mack, who was a hero and role model for Stevie Ray Vaughn. Wayne's work in the studio reminds one of the mastery of a fine surgeon, and the lead guitar lines he comes up with in real time are amazing, simply amazing. You can hear what I am talking about on this record.

Wayne's "Mendo Hotel" album is in release, along with an alternative version called "Ramblin' Heart". Either iteration of this record is superb.

Stylistically, we're all over the map here, from folkish sounding things to hard blues, power ballads, old-school R&B with big horns, country with an edge, slow, soft and dreamy R&B ballads.....all of it with a moral or a message that has to do with spirituality.

In these days and times we all need some of that, even if we cannot bring ourselves to darken the doors of a church.

If you are searching for something real in the universe or something true in your own heart, likely you can find it here, just have a listen.

Thanks for hangin with me!!

Doc Snow