Why this sudden burst of musical industry? Even as avocations go, ten years of silence between projects is rather long, but twenty is (you can do the math) doubly ridiculous. But for all that 2020 has been an utterly awful year, the lockdown has afforded certain unanticipated opportunities. The absolute very least one can say about Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prison or the prison letters of Paul is that their authors made the best of a bad situation. No, this little project is not worth comparing to those towering monuments of inspiration. But such examples do have a way of poking their noses into your puny corner of the world and asking: Well, what do you, for your part, have to say? Or even: What have you been given to say?
For me, the first answer to the question was this: I have not yet done a proper recording of the three-part guitar suite that evolved during my years in seminary, and among all the keyboard sequences, guitar licks, chord progressions, and other sketchy ideas scattered about my study-o, this suite has seemed to my mind the most mature and possibly the most enduring piece I have written. Meanwhile, the occasional pangs of aging that afflict various body parts from time to time have tended to get my attention most readily when they involve the hands. So, goaded by the great sequestration of 2020, I approached what I knew would be a short summer with the aim of finally recording this suite.
Over the late summer, however, I was able to find a tape and some .mp3s from two previous recordings of the same suite. The first was from a concert in 1994, when the parts of the suite (introduced under the title "Along the GWR") were scattered among other pieces (hence, there is some applause that would otherwise not interrupt the parts of a coherent whole). This one is interesting to me, since the third movement is not quite there rhythmically. The chord changes are, but the right hand had not yet fully embraced the hip-hop stroke. But it seemed far enough along at the time to use the movement to close the concert. Nothing like leaving the door ajar to say: To be continued. This third movement was very much a work in progress, so I think that explains why, in the liner notes to GWR (on the CD and in the excerpt below) I confess some uncertainty as to when exactly this piece emerged in full. I was, in fact, uncertain and that uncertainty is heard even in that recording, which was unearthed after GWR was released.
The second recording of the suite was done in the empty sanctuary of my second pastorate, in 2004, using an iTalk voice recorder attachment to a first generation iPod. In both cases, although the fidelity is lacking, there is a certain confidence to both renderings that — despite the uncertainty regarding the final form of GWR III in 1994 — argued for their preservation. For this reason, I included both previous drafts (without the benefit of overdubs or multiple takes) on Cutting Ruts: Live Tracks and Demos, which (not yet in the streaming pipeline) was released on CD in October. As I wrote to an old musicologist pal, maybe three slightly imperfect recordings, spanning 26 years, will manage to convey what one perfect, definitive performance would otherwise do.
In short, the recording and preservation of this suite has been on my bucket list for some time, but until the lockdown came to IA and the Spirit put the guitar back in my hands, I had no definite plans as to when or how to do it.
As the pandemic has continued, of course, another word has come to mind, along with other old songs and many new things, much of which took shape in Persevere (released in September), about which I have said and may say more elsewhere.
But as for the guitar suite, and the eponymous instrumental CD that aspires to, among other things (sorry for the split infinitive), speak an encouraging word to "the West" (nothing like starting out small), let me just conclude this long post with some excerpts from the liner notes that pertain to Tracks 8—10. I will only preface this excerpt by saying how odd it is that, when it comes to a record inspired more by pastoral guitarists like Anthony Phillips and Phil Keaggy, it is strange that I must first make mention of the indirect influence of the inimitable, peculiar, and enigmatic Robert Fripp!
Track 8. I. "Setting Out"
"... The suite—or the first chord of the first movement and the same configuration (relocated by two frets) to start the second—was inspired by a photo of Robert Fripp modelling his freakishly wide hand span splayed along what seemed like the whole length of his fingerboard. The photo appeared in an edition of Guitar Player magazine, if memory serves. My response: "Well, I cannot do that, Mr. Spock of Rock, but let us see how far I can stretch." And with that I found a rather nice arpeggio lying at my fingertips, the agony notwithstanding. The piece eventually passes by way of another chord that sounds like an acoustic piece from early Crimson, maybe from Wake or Lizard. But from the opening chord, the composition, like so many others, simply unfolds according to two chief criteria: What can I possibly reach? and What sounds good next?"
Track 9. II. "The Restless and Road-weary Heart"
"The shifted opening chord configuration has a wonderful dissonance, one that seemed very much worth juxtaposing, briefly if tortuously, with that of the first movement, and with that dissonant opening arpeggio, the whole movement takes on a search for resolution, the very character-forming stuff of spiritual journeys, which it eventually finds in a chromatic sequence I later reused (Capo 2) for "Strange Bedfellows" (The Word in the Wind), one of just a handful of songs written so far that (I think) qualifies for use in corporate worship."
Track 10. III: "Evening in the Summer Isles"
"One of my favorite pieces to both play and listen to, this was added, I think, not long after the 1994 concert, since I have no record of it from that evening. [NB: This, I now find, was incorrect. It was on the live record (as I mentioned above) but in an unfinished state.] I knew the suite needed a third movement, though, and one that took its point of departure from the final chord of the second movement. Nevertheless, this movement is about arrival, not departure. It has the feel to me of a Bruce Cockburn instrumental, whose guitar chops, like those of everyone else I have mentioned, so far exceed my own that any comparison is absurd. But he has written several pieces that convey the gently rocking waves of a safe harbor ("Salt, Sun, and Time") or even a not-so-safe one ("Waiting for the Moon"). I recorded and released this movement perhaps somewhat prematurely on The Word in the Wind, since it follows so nicely the closing riff on "Deep Blue Heart," if played in a different key (Capo 2), which I did, thus giving it the alternative title, "Turn Around." After the guitar sat in its case for over a decade, I got it out late last summer and used it for a pastor's retreat in November and for seminary chapel on December 9, 2019. I found this piece sounds just as good with Capo 4 and used it as traveling music during communion. ... Meanwhile, unless I can find something in the files to say otherwise, the only other recordings of the entire suite, prior to this release, are from home in the late 1990s [NB: still hunting for these], and from October 22, 2004, when I played it — as a concert for One — on Sunday afternoon in the empty sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church, Titusville, NJ. It being ten years old, I wanted to remind myself how it went, so I just grabbed what I was recording my sermons on, a first generation iPod with an iTalk condenser mike attachment. The recording quality is dreadful, as you might imagine, but it served the purpose of a musical 'memorandum.'"
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