NEW CD, OLD CD, NEW CD

In 2001, I recorded my very first solo guitar CD. It was a Christmas collection entitled “Holy Night”, and was completely recorded “live” in the studio; meaning that each song was played through with no overdubs, no editing, and no extra instrumentation.

Earlier this year my friend, and musical partner, Scott Adams, asked me if we could remake this album with a string orchestra dubbed over it. The challenge was intriguing. So we got together and created a string orchestra using mostly keyboard strings; however, to add depth and realism to it, we called on our friend, and master cellist, Chris White.

Chris had played on our “Acoustic Traditions” CD and also the “Moonlight Concert” CD. He had previously joined Scott on two other recordings. Chris is a natural musician, being able to read music and also being a very creative improviser. We needed both those talents.

With charts sometimes scribbled out on a torn off piece of legal yellow pad, and mostly made up on the spot, Chris gave us melody duplications, harmony lines and fleshed out a lot of the chord structures in the keyboard string parts.

15 cuts were recorded in less than 11 hours. By every bit of conventional studio wisdom, that is impossible; but we did it.

The resulting album will more than likely be re-titled, and will be released as a private issue for the Logos Bookstore Association- a non-profit trade association comprised of 20 independent Christian bookstore members- in December. You can find out more about a Logos near you at http://www.logosbookstores.com/
Then click on “find a store” at the top of the page.

Other new CDs in the works include an instrumental collection called “Back in the Window” (due out later this year), and a vocal collection called “New Love Songs” (due out in spring, 2012). Also, the original “Holy Night” solo guitar CD has just been added to cdbaby

In the meantime, I hope you visit http://www.rasely.com/ and also invite other people to “like” my Musician in the Middle of Nowhere page on Facebook.

What the Musician in the Middle of Nowhere Does in His Spare Time

This summer, my music partner Scott B. Adams and I released our latest CD “Country Roads…Beaten Paths”. You can find more information on that at http://www.orchardbeat.com/

Also, this summer, my wife and I built a goat shed, and fenced in the grazing yard for them. This took about 3 weeks to complete. We also re-covered our hoop house. This is what it looks like:

 
It was suggested to me, a long time ago, that I should develop interests in something other than music, just so I didn’t dissolve into a one-dimensional person. Through the years, I found an interest in the Civil War, and consequently discovered that I had two relatives who were wounded at the battle of Gettysburg. I began following baseball again; I had played as a kid and have always loved the game, and now I try to attend a major league game every other year as a vacation.

Another hobby of mine is collecting sci-fi space from the 50s and 60s. The black and white are the more desirable, but the whole pre-Star Wars genre is extremely entertaining. I have over 125 titles now. I found that watching the Flash Gordon serials from around 1940 was very enlightening when I heard that it was the model that George Lucas used. Watching Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope” in black and white gave it an entirely fresh look. You should try it sometime.

When I need a break from all that, I revert to my collection of Marx Brothers movies. I can watch them over and over again and they still make me laugh out loud. Or I lose myself in one of the novels of Charles Dickens, one of my all-time favorite authors.

Between my guitar teaching, my church position as Music Ministry Associate and my occasional performing and recording, I get to do a lot of music. But sometimes, just hanging out with the chickens and the goats is very relaxing. Here’s a video of our youngest goat Ruby “helping” me work on the goat barn.

FIRST DANCE

Way back…and I mean Waaaaay back in 1965, when I’d only been playing a year or so, I wrote my first instrumental song. It was called “First Dance”.

The fact is that it didn’t have a name for a long time, but I eventually came up with “First Dance” simply because it was my first tune, and because it was in ¾ time, a waltz.

Throughout the years of recording instrumental music (beginning in 1988), I never had a chance to record this particular song. As I prepare material for a release later this year of instrumental music, I decided that “First Dance” should have its first recording.

The CD will be called “Back in the Window” and will be a reconstruction of all my instrumental songs from the Eutycus Records release “In the Window” which was produced in 1991 as a cassette only. Songs like “Forever in your Heart”, Higher up, Higher In”, and “Was a Man” will be included, along with 2 or 3 new songs.

I consider myself very lucky/blessed to be able to do the work I do. And I hope that “First Dance” will be a song that will possibly get your feet moving. In the meantime, I invite you all to visit my listings on cdbaby which will lead you to all my other CDs.

SOMETIMES "HALFWAY" IS ENOUGH

Over the years, I have written songs that never had a place on an album.

Now they do.

The album is a CD called “Halfway” and is now available on CDBaby as a digital download.

These songs run a rather eclectic range of styles, from pop to folk to country. There’s a romantic ballad or two, and a few humorous songs. All of them are catchy and easy to sing along with. Some are quite emotional and others are autobiographical.

There are musical threads that hold them all together, but the lyrics also have a certain consistency to them, since they all come from the same source, and express my own particular world view. For instance: in the song “Halfway” I try to demonstrate that it’s all right for a guy to say he’s sorry; both “I Love This Town” and “Little Place in the Country” explain why I choose to be “In the Middle of Nowhere”. “Baseball: It’s America’s Game” was my response when Major League Baseball started playing again after 9/11/01, and “On This Silent Night” is a prayer for world peace.

Someone once asked me how I knew if any of my songs were good; I answered that I knew they were good because I had finished them. After more than 50 years of creating music I like to think that I know when a tune is worth completing or not. You can decide for yourself; give a listen HALFWAY

PLAYING THE GUITAR: A CHICK MAGNET?

I don’t think this is what Dire Straits had in mind in 1985 when they wrote:

Get your money for nothing
Get your chicks for free.

Although…

You do hear it said that playing the guitar is supposed to be a chick magnet. Come to think of it, back in 1966, when I first started to teach the guitar, I had a young lady who I thought was really (REALLY) cute. It turned out that she also had a crush on me. Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure. Anyway, in 1971, I married that girl, and she’s the one who took this photo. We’re coming up on our 40th wedding anniversary this year!! So…well, I guess it DOES work.

The chicks are all part of Woodchuck Acres self-sufficiency program. Some of these chicks will stay and some will be sold. Dare I say it, some might become dinner; but not today.

In the words of one chick I know: peep, peep, peep.

PREPARING TO PLAY A SHOW

On April 2, 3 , 4, 7, 8, and 9 I will be playing guitar in Morrisville College’s production of “The Robber Bridegroom”. This is a Tony-Award winning musical from 1974 that starred Patti Lupone. It is based on a story by Eudora Welty, and is completely in old-time country and bluegrass musical styles. This should be a lot of fun.

The music director, Doug Keith, sent me the score and I have started to work on it, thanks to a handy CD that came with it. As always in Broadway scores, there are some strange rhythms, some oddball time signatures, and an occasional weird key signature- what guitar player in his right mind plays in Ab minor???? That’s 7 flats…that’s the most you can have.

Well, my plan is to walk into the first rehearsal at least 85% performance ready. This saves a lot of time for everyone. Since the music is fairly simple, this should be no problem although there are always surprises.

The performances will be in the theater in the student center on the main campus. I hope to see some of you there.

BEST OF TIMES

Charles Dickens was not a musician. You might have already been aware of that little piece of trivia. The fact is, though, that Dickens had a very musical ear. He also had an incredibly cinematic imagination, which is all the more amazing since the motion picture camera wasn’t invented until 25 years after his death!! [FYI: Louis Lumiere is often credited as inventing the first motion picture camera in 1895.]

So what’s all this got to do with the Musician in the Middle of Nowhere??

Over the years, I have read all the novels of Dickens (there’s around 30 of them), and am now reading through them all again, along with a lot of extra material, such as the travel books, short stories, magazine articles, etc. And as I was reading, I noticed several passages that would make terrific texts for music. So I started to extract them, adapt them, and versify them. The result is that I have composed a set of seven choral pieces (SATB) with piano accompaniment that I am putting under the general title of “The Best of Times”.

The seven passages are from The Old Curiosity Shop, American Notes (2), Pictures of Italy, Martin Chuzzelwit, A Christmas Carol and (of course) A Tale of Two Cities.

I didn’t plan on a rendezvous with any particular event, but the odd fact is that 2012 will be the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth. It’s a nice way to celebrate one of my favorite authors.

Here are a couple of pages from “A Small Tyranny” (taken from the first chapter of Martin Chuzzelwit)