Parlors Porches & Islands

Roots can be tough, tangled and gritty, and they don’t always reveal what we might expect. Some people might be disappointed at finding the roots of blues and old-time guitar playing in bourgeois parlor music, but it fascinates me. Like Joseph Campbell says, it’s what we share in common that is most revealing. Although my musical roots are firmly in America, my travels have led to an appreciation of many kinds of traditional and “art” musics. In this collection I’ve tried to blend the ancient sounds of early music, the intricacies of traditional dance music, and the mystery of “Old Weird America”.

This collection is a voyage from 18th-century country dance tunes to 19th-century parlor or domestic guitar music, to music that found its way to traditional rural players, to Slack Key players in Hawai’i, and from there to my own music.