December 2018

An unseasonably mild end of the year and start to winter here in Nashville, 50+ degrees, on and off sunshine promised through the year’s end.  I’ll take it.

These last months have been a relatively quiet period and I’ve been using the time for writing as well as starting a new record.  I already have three things finished and ‘in the can’ as they used to say.  This record is shaping up to be a very different album than the others.  Really excited about it and am focused on its direction.  This record will more than likely not come out for a year or more due to my random nature of recording, but also……

2019 will be a touring year!  We gathered in London at the always wonderful British Grove Studios earlier this year to record Mark Knopfler’s latest Down The Road Wherever.  It was released this autumn and we’re all looking forward to bringing it live to Europe and the States.  The band will consist of the usual cast of knuckleheads plus the wonderful trumpet player Tom Walsh, a young musician with an old soul and knows every inch of that instrument from Louis Armstrong forward.  I’m also very pleased my pal Danny Cummings will be out with us again.  Dan played percussion with Dire Straits as well as having a famed studio career in London.  He played drums with Mark from 2005-2010 and is now returning in the percussion chair.  Danny and I, along with Guy Fletcher, got up to quite a bit of mischief in the five years we toured together and am looking forward to more of the same.  Over these many years Mark has put together the most talented band going and I’m grateful to be part of it…. certainly looking ahead to joining them all on the boards again.

Thanks for the overwhelming response to the current Ballads In Otherness album, seems Moderne Shellac continues to re-stock the shelves at CD Baby.  On the Craft Brewed Music front, their curated music site is always gaining speed and altitude.  I am happy to be one of their selected artists and thanks to many of you for subscribing.  If you’re curious, check them out at www.craftbrewedmusic.com and, if you decided to subscribe, please let them know that I sent you. Here is a short promo vid about CBM:   

I’ve been listening quite a bit to the new Shirley Collins album Lodestar.  At 80 years old she is the reigning matriarch of English folk songs having recorded extensively from the 1950’s through the ’70s.  Collins lost her voice to dysphonia and this is her first album in decades. It is a different voice now than her early records but one that gives these songs more gravity and meaning.  I also love the spare yet very powerful instrumentation of the record also lending weight to the songs.  Her recently published autobiography, All In The Downs, was inspiring to me as well as the documentary The Ballad Of Shirley Collins, all worthwhile.

It will be hopping here with our daughter and her family coming in from Indianapolis for Christmas and with our sons both living in Nashville, it will be a full compliment of Bennett’s around the holiday table.  Years ago we eschewed the trad turkey roasted and subbed it with Navajo tacos as our Christmas dinner and that seems to be the new norm now.

I wish you warm and peaceful holiday and all the best in the coming new year.

Richard