Cinematic solo piano pieces from an accomplished player showing incredible restraint and an exquisite sense of time and touch, with occasional cello and acoustic guitar; creating a masterful contemporary work of exceptional beauty.

13 MP3 Songs
NEW AGE: Solo Instrumental, CLASSICAL: Contemporary

Show all album songs: The Crossing Songs


Details:
A Brief Autobiography:
I was born the fourth of nine children in White Plains, New York to a French Canadian/Irish mother from Lewiston, Maine, and a first generation Irish father from Chattanooga, Tennessee. This combination of different worlds may have contributed to a lifelong fascination with other cultures. I've always felt both a part of, and yet somehow apart from, both North and South. My father relocated this very large family to Nashville when I was 16. I couldn't know this at the time, but this event became one of the most serendipitous things that ever happened to me.

At age 19 an urge to break out of the pack combined with a search for adventure led me to hitch-hike out West, where my oldest brother was then living with some friends in Oregon, and where I lived for the next six months. I was reading, living, and breathing Jack Kerouac, who had only died three years earlier, in 1969. Eventually my restlessness again led me to search for something more. I answered a "Pianist Wanted" notice someone had tacked to a bulletin board in a music store in Portland in 1973 and wound up playing piano with a trio in a club in Grants Pass, Oregon for the next eight months, launching a now 34 year music career.

I've had several spiritual awakenings during my lifetime. I got high with novelist Ken Kesey at his farm outside Eugene, Oregon one summer afternoon in 1972; had an epiphany one night backstage before a gig in Birmingham, England in June of '04 that music and religion could be the same thing; and played organ with Bishop Al Green at his Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Memphis, Tennessee on Easter Sunday April 26th of '05 after noticing that the keyboardist had failed to show up for the gig. Then one night after a gig recently in Santa Cruz, CA, I met and shared an earthquake (a 5.6) with John Cassady, the son of Neal and Carolyn Cassady, a couple of Beat Generation icons I read so much about when I was younger. I'm now sure that these were not unrelated events.

In between this span of time I studied classical piano with Carol Stone and W.O.Smith at Tennessee State University; played gigs with Roy Orbison and Jimmy Webb; wrote songs for Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, The Amazing Rhythm Aces and others, and spent 25 years making a living in Nashville recording studios.

I've toured Europe with Gretchen Peters eight times since '04, and I continue to record and tour internationally and domestically with her. I also tour with Alex Chilton and the Box Tops (I call this my "day gig"), when I am not engaged in studio work. My passion remains music, the love of a good woman, and watching my son Brennan's infatuation with music progress just as mine did. He seems to be in it for the long haul just as I am.

"The Crossing" is my first solo CD. The title, "The Crossing", is a metaphor for the changes that have happened in my life in the last three years. A long-time marriage ended, and a new relationship began with a singer-songwriter I've known for many years. The songs on the CD are a reflection of these last few years. At least three of the tracks are directly related to my recent tours in the UK. My goal was to create an instrumental piece of work that would hopefully break new ground artistically, drawing on the musical influences gained from a lifetime of playing and performing music. Most of the tracks are solo piano, but there is a cellist (David Henry) on 3 tracks, and an accoustic guitarist (Mark Selby) on 1 track. Also in the mix on 3 tracks are some sampled original piano notes, manipulated in the mix by the afore-mentioned David Henry, who also mixed the project at his True Tone Studio in Nashville.