New Worldwide Release: "Serengeti". The second of my 3 summer releases now available !!!
A musical adventure into the heart of Africa featuring a combination of world percussive instruments, smooth synth melodies, soaring guitars and arpeggios, creating an environment for visualisation and relaxing listening. In this exploration I started with a steel drum and moog bass randomly arpeggiating to the chord structure, while adding the percussion. I let it go from there and each verse passage I changed the melody using different instrumentation to finally arrive at this arrangement. A very exotic and exciting groove with hints of tribal and world music throughout. Hope you like it !!!
So grateful to receive this honor. We all worked hard to make this record and get the message to the world. This is a very special project for me and I hold it close to my heart. I hope all can listen and carry the message of peace, love and understanding for generations to come.
Official Video Release 07.08.2022. Imagine cruising down PCH to the warm and sandy beaches of Malibu for a day of relaxation and people watching. This is the music to take you there !!! Some good summer music for you. Available on all streaming platforms, and please subscribe to my Youtube channel for more new music coming this summer !
I always loved the lyrics to this tune and hoped to record a new version at some point. As some of you know, I don’t usually record cover tunes and focus mainly on instrumental compositions in various genres, but I felt a need to send out this message to the world with this recording. If we could ask ourselves the same query, I hoped this might be a step in the right direction.
I had a scratch track created in 2020 and was going to record the whole thing myself, but then the pandemic shut down that idea, so I started working on different arrangements with different instruments. By 2021 I had a working track that I liked so I reached out to my Detroit pals, Larry Minne and Charles “Buddy” Smith, and said let’s do another record. I wanted to record 2 versions of this track, a vocal on the A side and an instrumental version on the B side. As fate would have it, I had some health issues over the year, so the recording was postponed until I could get up to Detroit in September ‘21 for a one-day session. I had sent up the working track earlier to these guys to listen to. I brought all my recording gear and setup..... so on recording day I had Larry on harmonica, while Buddy arrived with a special guest, Audra Kubat, another fine Detroit singer/songwriter...... I was planning on a 3-4 minute tune without any solos, just the lyrics.......so I rolled the track and then we started improvising and trying different combinations of voices and harmonica, I just kept all the tracks we did record and I added some additional vocals that could be used in the mix. I had an idea for an ethereal opening that would set the tone for the tune and grab the listener, so I asked Audra and Larry to just play off each other without using lyrics, imagining standing on a mesa overlooking giant canyons, with the voice and harmonica floating in space, Buddy pulled off a masterful vocal, and I just let the track roll at the end and let Buddy and Audra improvise an incredible scat. So we made it up as we went, and that is how I like to work to catch the spontaneity of the moment. I had a lot of material to take home and listen to, edit and put it into a song format that would work. I finished with a song that was something different than I had imagined and much, much more interesting ....... I hope you enjoy this 6 minute opus, we all worked on this recording to spread the message...... we have to learn to live together........RS
