Recordings of some holiday favorites a while back. Now with a bonus jazz guitar track of The Christmas Song.
Tele In The Studio
In 2014, I happened to be playing an R&B gig in a club. Matt Greco, a local sound engineer, was in the audience there and came up afterwards to ask me if I would like to play some guitar on a country music project. I said, “Sure.” This is part of the session that followed, with me playing Matt’s Telecaster.
The Nylon Project
I have always played some level of solo guitar, but as solo guitar became more the rule than the exception (2010-ish), I purchased a Taylor nylon string guitar. With that, I recorded a selection of tunes to demo for playing weddings, restaurants, and such, and called it The Nylon Project. It worked! And it was the beginning of a long relationship with nylon string guitar.
Blackbird
I was inspired to arrange this instrumental version of Paul McCartney’s wonderful tune, Blackbird. The intro was inspired by something I saw Martin Taylor play. I asked him about the intro, and chuckling, asked him if I could steal it for my own use. He said, “Sure, I stole it from Johnny Smith”. Martin and I shared a number of such stories in that time period around 2011.
Bright Size Life – Solo Guitar Version
This solo version of Bright Size Life, by Pat Metheny, is one of my most played videos on youtube. Pat’s clever tunes are always interesting to work on and always a pleasure to revisit.
Playing “True”
This song by Martin Taylor is fun to play and has a beautiful melody. It’s a wonderful piece to know on the guitar. I have a written arrangement for it as well.
Mood For A Day
This is a favorite solo guitar piece that I learned a long time ago. I think I was fifteen when the Yes album, Fragile came out, which included this tune by Steve Howe. He was one of my favorite guitarists at that impressionable age, so I immediately took on the task of figuring out how it play it. It remains in my repertoire to this day. My version of it has probably evolved a little over the years.
Lessons
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Swing Essence at Spotlight Music
In February, 2011, my band had a rehearsal and demo recording session at Spotlight Music in Fort Collins, CO. This was the 5 plus 1 format with Andrew Vogt on woodwinds, Ron Holleman on trumpet, Rob “Oscar Dezoto” Wojtowick on drums, vocalist Sally Herried and yours truly on guitar and vocals. Here’s a sample from that day.
Swing Essence – Jazz, Dance, & Party!
Swing Essence is a band I formed in 2004 in Colorado. We had a great run for 8 or 9 years and played many wonderful events. I so enjoyed arranging the music and leading this group. Here are a few demo tracks from rehearsals recorded in 2007. We did several of these sessions to try out new 7 piece arrangments. Here was the line up of musicians who played.
Vocalists: Colleen Crosson, Sally Herried
Bass: Michael Olson
Drums: John Olson (no relation to Michael), Oscar DeZoto
Keyboards: Dave Roberts, Chris Hatton
Trumpet: Mark Dorn
Saxophones: Andrew Vogt
Kevin Karrick: Guitar/Vocals