7 September 2010
Labor Day has come and gone and I hope you've all had a good summer. I always hate to see the end of the season, a throw back to my childhood when the school year started the day after Labor Day. Still, we'll have loads of mild days left for barbecues and the humidity has already begun drying up.
If you follow this site you will already know that the Mark Knopfler tour wrapped on July 31st. The following day I flew from Madrid to Miami then on to a two week holiday on the Gulf of Mexico. It was a glorious two weeks of doing absolutely nothing. All our children managed to get down with their boy/girlfriends and water was beautifully warm, clear and free of BP's sludge.
I hit the ground running on return to Nashville helping our son move into a great apartment in Knoxville where he has begun his senior year of university. A large airy one bedroom flat in a complex on the historic register. Problem is no lift and his apartment's on the forth floor. Many trips up and down those four flights.
As you can imagine being away from home for five months the mail that had accumulated looked like a small mountain. The last month has been spent digging out from under and catching up with friends and business acquaintances. I've also done some session work already, a couple of days beginning a new album with Kellie Pickler and another day recording with an artist named Sarah Johns who I've recorded with in the past.
I have a live gig coming up at Nashville's legendary Station Inn on the 18th of September with Eric Brace and Peter Cooper, two wonderful singer songwriters. They have a brand new album out together on Red Beet Records called Master Sessions that I'm very proud to have been part of. Joining us on the album are two titans of the steel guitar, dobro icon Mike Auldridge and pedal steel genius Lloyd Green. Both Lloyd and Mike have a mutual admiration for each other and the way they work together is really something to see and hear. This was another one of those albums recorded live, everybody playing at once in the studio and when it was decided we had a 'take', that was it. The show at the Station Inn will be for the release of the album and everyone who played on it will be there on stage.
After nearly 50 years of playing the guitar it's finally dawned on me that I have way too many of them. I've always been fortunate and had plenty of room to keep them all, so I never had to make a decision or let any go. Well, it's time to begin thinning the herd. I certainly have no plans for retirement, in fact just the opposite. In moving some along that I no longer play it will make room for others. I'll make note of it here on the site when I get the first one ready to sell.
One last thing, I did an interview that appeared in the September 2010 issue of Guitar Player Magazine and can be read if you go to the links on the left of this page and click "Press". The author, Andy Ellis is a senior editor of the magazine as well as hosting a great weekly radio programme called The Guitar Show on Radio Free Nashville that can be streamed and is worth hearing. He's a player himself and asks good questions.
Throw the windows wide and enjoy the cooler weather as we head into autumn.
Richard