I’m happy to announce a new addition to my website. Compositions from my “Indian Paintbrush, Sketches of the Southwest” are now available for downloads. There are samples of each piece there as well.

Let me tell you a little bit about the compositions and the idea behind the concept. “Indian Paintbrush” is an imaginary visit to an imaginary southwest art gallery and each composition is a musical interpretation of an imaginary painting. OK, it’s kinda ‘out there’, but it was fun to do. All of the pieces are instrumentals and I was fortunate to be able to work with some outstanding studio musicians who brought my music to life. We recorded the entire project at Lion Share recording studio in Hollywood which was owned by Terry Williams. I had worked with Terry when he was a founding member of The First Edition. The music features players like Jerry Hay, John Hobbs, Mitch Holder, Gary Herbig, Emil Richards, Richard Greene, Bob Wilson, Ken Wild, and I enjoyed playing along myself.

I like to write visually and I always have an image in my mind when I’m composing. In this case each piece was designed to represent a specific image. “Mission San Migel”, for instance, is about a old Spanish mission right off US 101 in the central coast region of California and it looks very much like it must have looked two or three hundred years ago. I used to stop there on my way back home at the beach after visiting my daughters. There was a vending machine there outside of the mission itself and I would have a cold soda and look out at the low rolling hills around the area and it didn’t take much imagination to see how it must have felt to live there during those early days. It made quite an impression on me and I wanted to capture that musically.

“Cliff Dwellers” is very much the same type of piece and that was inspired by a visit to the Mesa Verde ruins in New Mexico when I was a young boy. I tried to paint a musical portrait of a cold, lonely, and austere lifestyle in such a barren setting. “Arenas of Gold” is a musical picture of the Conquistadors who came through the southwest from Mexico searching for the Seven Cities of Gold. Traveling along on the interstate on occasion I try to imagine the soldiers riding their horses across the desert way back when.

“Oil Basin Lone Star Blues” is about West Texas beer joints and shuffle board tables, loud country music, cold bottles of Lone Star and waitresses named Bobbie Sue and Rebecca Jo wearing beehive hairdos and skin tight blue jeans. “Indian Paintbrush” and “Bluebonnet Seas” are both about the wonderful wildflowers that fill the Texas prairies in the spring.

Well, that will give you an idea of what all of that is about. Check it out if you get a chance and I hope you enjoy the experience.