A couple of years ago I was playing doumbek for a dance troupe at the Rennaisance Faire in Fair Oaks. It was a hot day and I took some off-time to browse around the vendors who had tents set up in the shade. One of the vendors was an Egyptian guy who was selling belly dance costumes, finger cymbals and other random stuff. I bought the suling from this guy, assuming it also was of Egyptian origin. Not so. The suling is used in gamelan music from Bali, and seems to be considered little more than a toy by serious flute people. I paid a toy price for it - around $10.00, but I liked it's breathy, raspy quality. The next day I bought a doumbek from the same guy. One Saturday morning, many months later, I woke with a feeling that something fundamental and yet undefinable about the universe had changed in the night. Has this ever happened to you? This song is about that feeling.

This song was inspired by the movie Never Cry Wolf, which Bea and I rented last spring. I love this movie and recommend it. This is one of those songs that wrote itself in about 10 minutes one afternoon. I watched the movie and at the end the song was in my head. The flute is made by the guy from Coyote Oldman. I am a huge fan of their music. I struggled with this flute in the beginning. I tried making some modifications to it. They worked ok, but I still wasn't crazy about it's tone. So I put it back together the way it came, and just spent a lot of time playing it. Once I accepted it on it's own terms I came to like it very much. The big frame drum in the chorus was purchased one Sunday afternoon at Haight Ashbury music in San Francisco. I never go there without finding something intriguing. I didn't know Remo made a 22" tunable hand drum, but there it was. It's ridiculously big, but I love it. The guitar I've had for many years. It was actually a gift from my first wife.

a mirage on east D avenue

bamboo flutes + classical guitar + synth

When I was young I lived in a semi-rural area of Michigan. Our home was in the middle of a 100 acre woods, at the end of a 1/4 mile dirt driveway, off East D Avenue. Some of my earliest memories are of standing at the end of that driveway, across the road from the neighbor's corn field, waiting for the school bus. The driver's name was Bob - I remember that just now as I am writing this. It's funny what you remember if you take the time.

On hot summer days you could look down the road, hear the birds singing in the woods and in the cornfield, and see images of water swimming on the pavement.

For some time I've wanted to buy a tampura, which is a drone instrument from India. I've looked at a bunch of them. Early in 2005 I paid a visit to the Ali Akbar College of Music's new store in San Rafael, and discovered one I really liked. It was $1500.00. At this point, I have a hard time spending $1500.00 on an instrument whose only purpose is to drone, so I created a sort of facsimile of the tampura using the guitar - modified by some electronic gadgets - and the synth. I think it worked out pretty well, though it doesn't really sound like a tampura.