Back in November, I recorded a single called "Just Passing Through," which has since reappeared on the instrumental record, Just. This track is a sequel to that one, which will explain the gratuitous use of the little hammered guitar lick that is very similar to the one that opened that track. In other words, the similarity is intentional, and admittedly more than a little lazy.
From the liner notes on the CD:
An earlier, organ-only version of the quotation of “Eventide” that opens this track was too plodding, so I added the guitar backing and a good dose of impatience with death in order to arrive all the sooner at the point of this instrumental. Intended as a sequel to “Just Passing Through,” which appeared on the previous album, Just (December 31, 2020), this track has obvious structural similarities to that one, so it will hopefully complete the thought with no residual ambiguity. While the two pieces are in different tunings (“Just Passing Through” uses Capo 2, this one Capo 5), the primary chord progression here, which is strummed again very slowly in the rubato break, is a cross-shaped configuration of two-fingered chords. The most tuneful part of the flute melody is a lick that has been on file for decades as part of a long and involved instrumental piece called “The Minch,” so this melody may one day reappear, if that lumbering track ever fully awakens from sleep to tell its own story of resurrection. If not, then perhaps it will do so on better shores.
Let me only add a word or two about the lower brass, which plays an almost comical, blatting role in the Palm Sunday tune [Agincourt] on Track 2, but here really helps the track take off. Two treasured people come to mind with the modest, but soaring use of the brass patch here.
First, my sweet dad — Happy birthday, Dad! — was a lower brass guy in the Nebraska University marching band back in the 1940s and later played in civic orchestras and other ensembles. Man, he had a mellow tone, which I, the inheritor of his baritone and trombone, could never match. Though gone these almost fourteen years, he would have appreciated the brass being given a melodic role here.
Second, a jovial chap with whom I played baritone in junior high, then later in several honor bands over the years, with whom I crossed paths at high school cross-country meets and later at university. A year ahead of me in school, Kent Wallace was a gentle, smiling, good-natured guy who played baritone and bass guitar, and later made a living in video production. I lost track of him ages ago, but recently learned that he died in 2014 of ALS. He too had a superior tone to mine when it came to the euphonium, so I was always "second fiddle" to his first chair. But I think of him and my dad both when the "bari" lines come in and the track achieves lift off. Maybe we can all sit together and play and crack a few jokes in the lower brass section of heaven's orchestra—if I make the cut, that is. (Lower brass always has a lot of down time for cracking jokes in rehearsal while everyone else gets their act together, so great melody and countermelody lines are a very welcome thing when such bones are thrown in our direction.)
As before, click through to your favorite streamer:
Meanwhile, the physical CD — destined to be a rarity! — is here.
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